


Brother's Keeper

by SouthernMoonshine



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: AU, Brothers AU, Gen, If Thom Had A Spine, Rook and Thom being brats, Rook is a rake, The Dragon Corps is Insubordinate and get away with it, Thom being a smartmouthed brat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7879900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernMoonshine/pseuds/SouthernMoonshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Thom and Rook had never been separated? What if they had grown up together?</p>
<p>Let's just say things get a whole lot snarkier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thom: The Incident

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the AU I originally intended to write, but I cannot for the life of me write Thom as a milksop, so I speculated and came up for a reason for him to have a spine.
> 
> I do not own Havemercy, these characters, or the plot.
> 
> I am, however, going to take great liberties with all of the above, and mix and match and patch out some of the gaping plotholes and fluff out some of the bare-bones character sketches. The end result may not be to everyone's liking. Please proceed with caution. If you see any glaring timeline/plot errors, drop me a line and let me know so I can edit. These books are a navigational nightmare to begin with, let alone coming at them with the mix-and-match method I'm using for this fic....

When Marius first walked in and started asking about recent public incidents of notice, several dozen jumped to mind. I eyed him carefully, and asked with some reluctance, “Which one?” This, and his insistence that I remain seated, did not bode well in the least, and every old Molly instinct I had was standing up and all but screaming that I was about to be in very big trouble. 

“The Dragon Corps. The most famous one.”

The Dragon Corps still brought out a dozen scandals over the past three months alone, given it was as close to an actual period of peace as we’d ever have before the war itself was over, and every soldier in the city or out of it was bored out of their wits and consequently acting like witless idiots. The esteemed, illustrious Dragon Corps were no exception. 

I seized upon the latest disaster, and questioned: “The diplomat’s wife?”

“Arlemanges,” Marius sighed. “I’ve been in damn talks for the past forty-eight hours. The man wants their heads.”

Given the Dragon Corps were all that stood between us and a sound defeat in the war, that was unlikely...and having a vague acquaintance with the men in question, well, I knew it was doubly unlikely. “Unless they’re going to set up a duel, I doubt he’ll get that.”

Marius briefly looked thoughtful, then horrified. “We can’t alienate the Arlemange. With so much spent on the war, we need trade and their support, but we certainly can’t hand over the Dragon Corps. And this is where you will come in, Thom.”

Where I - a mostly-penniless dependant-on-scholarships low-bred ‘Versity student studying the peculiarities of a society raised almost wholly on war - came in. Marius’s area of expertise was politics. Mine was more societal structure and morality. There was some overlap, and certainly I’d been very grateful for the magician taking me under his wing during my first year at the ‘Versity, but I was failing to see any connection. 

“Marius?”

“Well, I...Thom, you’re a very intelligent young man,” Marius began, carefully. This was not inspiring any comfort. “And if someone else saw an opportunity that you yourself...no.” He shook his head. “I have volunteered you. To rehabilitate the Dragon Corps. It’s your thesis, isn’t it?”

In so many words, _no it was fucking not_ , but all that came out of my mouth was a polite stuttering demur. “N-not exactly…”

“The Esar, his esteemed and wealthy highness, will give you more funding than you could ever dream of,” Marius reported, stroking his beard, his dark eyes bright. The eagerness made him look much younger, despite the thick streaks of grey in his hair and beard. “If you can do this, you will be a national hero, the Esar will be ecstatic, the Arlemange less damn loud, the Dragon Corps more civilized, and everyone so happy their jaws ache with grinning.”

“And,” I interjected, swallowing hard against the growing dismay, “If I refuse?”

“Oh. That’s not an option. I’m sorry, Thom, it was an opportunity, one of the best you’ll ever get.” 

“Oh,” I said, faintly, and clamped my mouth shut lest I dissolve into less polite exclamations. I had worked for years to scour the Molly accent and slang out of my habits, but dreadful shocks like these made it very tempting to relapse. 

I was not, _not_ a diplomat, a professor, or even graduated. I was a student in his last year working on his culminating thesis with hopes of an apprenticeship after I graduated and possibly finding a patron to fund my publishing of my thesis into a proper book. A thesis, I might add, only tangentially related to the Dragon Corps’ behavior and involving absolutely nothing on the purpose of reforming _anything,_ only making a comment on the state of society today as a whole as compared to historical periods of peace and other cultures. I was defining the problems, not fixing them.

Marius grinned, and shuffled me along into his hansom, barely giving me time to fetch my best coat. We whisked along the cobbled streets and I did my best to hide the fact that my waistcoat was currently missing two buttons. And then, out in front of the Esar’s palace, and inside, and dragged down carpeted halls and gilded furnishings.

I’d come up a long way in the world, rising from the back streets of Molly to the ‘Versity stretch in my studies, but I had never once expected to rub shoulders with nobility, much less _royalty._ The class division in Thremedon was far too sharp for that! I had, on occasion, trailed along after Marius to various higher-end shops, but that was the extent of my interactions with the noblesse. I didn’t have the money or the looks to mingle, being from Molly and cross-bred as any dockside bastard.

I wasn’t sure if I was having a dream or a nightmare. I was sure that either way, this would be a tale my brother would enjoy hearing later. 

The Arlemange diplomat was ranting in his own tongue, and I could barely understand his accent. I’d learned both Arlemange and Old Ramanthe as my language requirements for ‘Versity entrance, but while Old Ramanthe could be heard in a bastardized version in certain quarters of Molly, all the Arlemange I’d ever learned had been strictly from a book. Listening now, I could see that many of my perceived pronunciations had been badly off. The diplomat, understandably angry over a very personal topic rather than matters of state, was flinging threats and the occasional writing implement around the surprisingly small meeting room.

I was trying very hard not to stare like a gawping goosegirl at my surroundings. I’d never seen such a display of wealth, or ever hoped to be in the bastion. It was a piece of history itself, one of the oldest buildings in Thremedon and the last remaining Ramanthine edifice that had not been destroyed when Volstov simply rolled over their Ramanthine neighbors and conquered them. The Ramanthines had been exhausted from waging war on the Xian nation and had been easy prey, and Volstov had inherited the war against Xian...now more commonly known by butchered version of the name as the Ke-Han. The Ramanthe people had been reduced to beggars and paupers and scorned down into segregation in Molly. Things had gotten a little better since then, and some families had mingled over the last hundred years, but more had not, preferring to remain true to their bloodlines. A hundred years was a long damn time, but came out to only three or four generations, all told. 

Which was nowhere near long enough to let prejudice and festering resentment subside, but these days there were no riots in the streets by the Ramanthines: the Esar’s predecessors had done a good job of executing dissenters. 

And the bastion had done a damn good job of repelling them. It was built like a fortress, and had been both fortress and prison: in fact it was the largest and most famous prison we had, both for the names of its inmates and for crueller reasons. 

I had the feeling everyone gathered in the room - from The Esar himself all the way down to me - wanted to tell the diplomat to calm down, but were worried about triggering some other explosion that might end in war with both the Ke-Han and the Arlemange both. While we had the military might to probably manage both, we didn’t have the internal resources. Thus our attempts to ally with the Arlemange, though popular sentiment said it was only now that we were actually winning against the Ke-Han did the Arlemange decide to join. 

I lurked behind Marius and was glad he was the one who handled the politics, not me. I’d no doubt make some kind of blunder and get us tangled up in another war…The cuckolded diplomat ran out of steam and leaned against a table, red-faced and huffing, and poured himself a goblet of wine. Well, that didn’t help matters much, did it?

Abruptly, I realized everyone was staring at me. I swallowed against the sudden spurt of panic.

“I am told,” said the Esar, whose face I had never actually seen in person before, “That you might have a solution.”

_Marius you dog-faced son of a fisherman’s whore,_ I thought in a wild flurry of panic, and bowed as low as I could to the king: I could not actually say no to him, could I? Not and still live to tell the tale, I feared. 

Several nerve-wracking hours later, Marius deposited me back into my creaky dorm room, grinning like a fool as he left.

For my part, I sat down in my chair and raked my hands through my hair for a good ten minutes, trying to slow my breathing down. I didn’t think I’d ever danced so long on the fine edge of panic, scrambling to answer coherently and sound like I knew what I was talking about. Public speaking had never been my forte and probably never would be, I decided, straightening at last. 

I took off my best coat and put it away. I was tired but there was something I needed to do tonight before I slept. It was the early hours of the morning, technically, as I pulled a hat low on my head, put my glasses in a pocket, and hit the streets of Thremedon.

Traffic was light as this hour, which meant I was in less danger of being run over or trampled. I moved quickly, a trot that both kept me warm and made me look busy without appearing to hurry: a valuable pace learned early when you grew up in Molly, thick with pickpockets and muggers. It worked here in Charlotte, too, and I reached my destination wholly unmolested, breath steaming in the cold air. It wasn’t yet the dead of winter, but it was fast becoming that.

I stared up for a moment at the Airman, the enormous two-story building that housed the Dragon Corps. Then I turned and ducked down an alley to the back. Luck was with me: I found one of the foundlings from Molly who worked in the dragon’s stables there. A sorry grungy mess, he looked made of more grease and soot and rags than actual flesh, but he took my note and my coin and swiftly vanished into the building.

I didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I struck out again. A few streets down there was a tavern that was decently clean, the alcohol mostly still alcohol, and the company made up mainly of tired workmen. I squeezed in and found a little table near the back, and spent some time wringing my poor hat out of shape and fretting about what even in the name of the bastion I was going to _do._ Reform the Dragon Corps? Might as well catch the moon, because they had been running wild for as long as they’d been a group.

Raise a phalanx of soldiers on their own importance, give them free reign and only th’Esar’s judgement over them, make them the goddamn _heroes_ of the war, and you made a force unstoppable to enemy and allies alike.

A man dropped into the seat across from mine and clunked a pair of tankards on the table. I glanced up briefly at my brother. Dressed in a worn coat and with his distinctive hair bundled up under a shabby hat, he looked like just another workman from the factories. His eyebrows were darkened with soot, even, but my brother had always been a consummate actor. “An’ to what do I owe the fuckin’ pleasure, Hilary?” he asked. The Molly slur was thick in his voice, vowels short and hard, consonants slurred together, and speech liberally sprinkled with profanities of all sorts. 

I grabbed the tankard he’d pushed my way and took a deep draft of it before answering. I used his childhood name as he’d used mine. “I am to reform the Dragon Corps, John.”

He blinked before he started laughing, loud and uproariously. I continued to drink my beer and waited.

“Oh, that’s a good joke, I almost thought you were…” He trailed off as I stared at him. “Saint Regina’s tits, you’re serious.”

“I am going to need something stronger than beer, I spoke face to face with th’Esar himself about teaching the dragon riders to mind their manners, and he’s going to fund my damn research and that will get my thesis published,” I told him, hardly believing it myself.

John watched me for a moment, eyebrows raised, ice-pale blue eyes thoughtful. “I’ll go get the fuckin’ vodka,” he declared, after a moment, and abandoned his half-drunk beer to go talk to the man behind the bar. I finished my beer and rubbed my hands over my face. 

John returned not only with a bottle of vodka, but also a platter of _pirozhki_ which was probably a good idea. I ate one while he used a knife to pull the cork from the bottle. The dumpling had meat, egg, and cheese in it, and tasted decent enough for me not to worry about what _sort_ of meat it might be. John tossed the cork at me and made his knife vanish - up his sleeve this time, I thought. 

Where he kept his knives varied from day to day, but he was never without them. 

“So, Hilary. Start from the start,” he commanded, taking back his beer and stealing a few dumplings for himself.

So I did, and watched him flicker between amused, annoyed, and wincing. I also demonstrated for him the actual Arlemagne accent, which he just grinned about until I realized exactly where he might’ve heard it before. Damn him. I rounded out my tale with, “You’d think the Airman Rook might’ve been a little more discreet.”

He hummed into his beer. I grabbed the vodka and took a pull right from the bottle. I surfaced coughing, eyes watering, because it had been a while. “I heard the fuckin’ Airman Rook mistook her for a whore, what with all those lace and ruffles.”

“I think Airman Rook should have considered the distinct peculiarities of Arlemagne fashion and kept it in his pants,” I returned. John looked amused again, blue eyes merry. I was not feeling very merry. 

“The more layers a tart has, the better the tart.” He shrugged. 

“Only in desserts, you Molly-brained braggart,” I sighed, and reached for another dumpling.

“Who says women ain’t dessert?” His grin was downright sinful and I closed my eyes to keep from shoving the remainder of my dumpling up his nose. It’d be a waste of dumpling and I didn’t feel like brawling. Just getting drunk.

“I know a few women who’d love to hear you say that, then rearrange your face for you,” I offered. “They might even straighten out your nose if you ask nice.”

John snorted and stole the vodka for a long drink. “Thanks but no. You know when you meet the dragon riders?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, at th’Esar’s palace,” I answered, between bites. I snagged the vodka again. “I have been grilled by Basquiat members and given notes and sworn to secrecy and I’ll probably end up in the prison or dead if I fail or accidentally spill secrets about anything.” I’d probably drunk too much too quickly. I was starting to feel fuzzy but far less panicky. 

“Or, y’know, strung from the Airman roof by your neck,” John offered, cheerily, waving a dumpling about. “I hear the pilots are fuckin’ brutal.”

“I think I’d prefer their tender mercies,” I drawled. I’d learned to live with John, after all, and twenty-four long years under his less-than-tender care furnished one with remarkable survival capabilities, and a resilience generally only found in certain kinds of stone. Growing up in Molly had merely made it all the more so. 

“Your fuckin’ neck, not mine,” John returned, but the grin curled in the corners of his mouth was a smug one, pleased.

I kicked him in the ankles. “An’ fuck you too.”

“Same, bitch.” And there he went, giving me that affectionate grin which I really couldn’t help but return. Damnable man, you really couldn’t live with him, but I certainly couldn’t have lived without him. He settled back in his chair, well-content to eat cheap dumplings and get drunk on cheap vodka. 

I intended to get just drunk enough not to give a single care about tomorrow, and go back to the dorms and go to sleep. 

I stretched my legs out and drummed my heels on the tops of John’s boots. He only rolled his eyes and lightly menaced me with a curled fist. I stuck my tongue out at him. Childish, yes, but he did that to me. He was only five years older, by our estimated count, but he had always seemed such a solid commanding presence that I tended to lapse into a child’s gestures and demands for attention. 

We didn’t look much like brothers, I suppose: his features were broad and handsome, chiseled and classic like a statue….despite his broken nose and scarred face. He was blonde with startlingly pale blue eyes. I had rather rounded features, a snub nose, and green eyes and muddy brown hair. I was also of a rather lankier, scholarly build, whereas he had heavy bones and solid muscle. The only thing that remotely marked us as possible brothers was the shared milk-in-coffee shade of our skin….but that was also half of Molly, as the poverty-stricken Ramanthines bred out in traditional methods and through whoring and rape. Our mother had been a prostitute, and I didn’t remember her at all.

John said I looked like her, though. He apparently took after some unknown father; or a distant ancestor, perhaps. 

“Good luck on the morn. You’ll need it,” he told me, and drank to it.

I did as well. I would need all the luck I could get.


	2. Rook: The Airman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein I can't get Rook to give me a decent chapter length, so it's short.

It was getting near to morning by the time I wandered into the Airman again, a large square fucking ugly building right on the edge of Miranda. It was farther up in the city than I’d ever thought I’d get, in with the fancy stone-built mansions and walled gardens of the noblesse. I went up the back way, weaving around the trash-heap and going through the servant’s door to the paddock, where they brought the coal and fuel for the girls. 

I didn’t take off my hat or my coat just yet, but the girls knew who I was, maybe by the sound of my boots on the soot-stained flagstones. Sleek metal heads rose to peer over stall partitions, light glimmering off scales in every shade of metal there was: gold and copper and iron grey and white and black and sky blue and bronze and green and silver. It was always hot in the stables, like a dozen furnaces going all the time: in the summer it was damn miserable but now in early winter it was almost pleasant. 

I stopped by Havemercy’s pen and leaned on the bars acting as a gate. Nothing but wood, any of the girls coulda gotten out any minute they wanted, but machines - even ones running on magic - weren’t like animals and didn’t have anywheres to go anyway. 

Have put her head down to study me, head almost as big as I was tall, her teeth as long as my hand, her enormous eyes black with white centers. “Been enjoying yourself, brat?” she rumbled: her voice was mechanical, artificial, with the wheeze of bellows and grinding of gears in It. But it was a woman’s voice, low and husky and sweet to me. Sometimes. When she weren’t pissed.

“Not as much as I’d fuckin’ like,” I told her, honestly, and slipped through the bars into the pen, boots quiet on the grooved stone - a testament to how sharp her claws and scales were. “Gimme a lift back up to my room, baby girl?”

I ran my bare hand down her shoulder: ebony and platinum, black with silver-white edging and shiny as could be: I’d polished her good this afternoon. 

She clucked her tongue, the sound like a blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil. “Where are your manners, you rude little bastard?”

“ _Please_ gimme a lift to my room,” I amended, glancing up at the trapdoor. Each Airman roomed over his dragon, so when a raid happened in the night, we could slide down the trap and be in the pens quicker’n spitting. 

“Shan’t,” Have returned, smug bitch. “Adamo’s looking for you. Knows you went out.”

“Shit.” We were all supposed to stick close to the Airman until we found out how th'Esar was gonna punish us. Not that it made any damn difference to me what orders was, I'd do as I liked if I wanted, but Adamo was either gonna bawl me out or put me on dog rations, and I weren't in the fuckin' mood to deal with either of them. 

Giving us an order like that was askin' for trouble anyways. So was keeping us on the ground: like lighting a fuse to a powder keg. Sooner rather than later something was gonna blow and it was gonna be ugly. And th'Esar fuckin' knew it, too. The other men had been worrying, back and forth, over what was gonna happen, but not me. Th'Esar couldn't do nothing to us, even if he was mad as spit and in a rough place with the Arlemange. 

I heard they'd exiled Margrave Royston, or Mary Margrave as they were callin' him in the rough taverns down in Mollyedge. I was all for the nickname, seeing as he was queerer than a three-chevronet.

But th'Esar couldn't exile us.

Not every man could say he'd had a riot held on his account, but I knew fourteen who could an' _would_ if th'Esar tried to do anything to us. We were his damn war heroes, the only advantage Volstov had in this war. The Ke-Han had their magicians with air magic, but we were better. Volstov had been lookin' to lose until our magicians and artificers had come up with the dragons, and we'd even things out 'till it came time to win. 

Not that I thought I'd live to see us winning. War had been going on long before I'd been born, probably would keep going after I kicked it. 

We'd whooped the Ke-Han good a few months ago, left the blue bitches licking their wounds good. We'd hit 'em good just outside their capital city Lapis, where they'd massed a lotta troops for an assault on ours: a good long raid in the night by the dragons an' all that was left by morning's light was charred bodies an' tents. We'd fuckin' decimated a damn good part of their fighting men, an' while they was layin' quiet for now it wasn't so they could roll over and show their bellies. 

No, it was so they could rally up an' come back fighting mean as ever, and the moment they came crawling over the mountains again, we'd be back in good graces and th'Esar kissing ass like the damn margrave he'd banished. Th'Esar needed us to win his damn war, and we all fuckin' knew it. 

"Gotta clean up anyways," I told Have. Did the others know I went out fuckin' skulking around in disguise like grifter? No they did fuckin' not, and it weren't any of their business anyways. I was a grifter, though, one of the best damn con-men down by the docks in Molly proper. I'd had to be, to keep me an' my little brother fed.

Have heaved a hot sigh at me, making the skin of my face feel tight, before she lowered her head. I took hold of the first spine on her neck and stepped up, carefully crouching on her faceplate. She lifted her head suddenly, craning her neck around in such a way she'd've tossed me if I hadn't been ready.

But I was, 'cause that was my best girl, always testing me, teasing me. And I proved I was still damn good enough for her by riding it out smooth as you wish, and climbing up through the trap quick as any Mollyrat. "Thanks, baby girl."

Her chuckle drifted up through the trap door as I closed it. 

I peeled off my dirty jacket and hat, shaking my hair free. Grabbing a dirty shirt off the floor, I scrubbed my face, taking off the soot that blackened my brows and marked my hands and face as a common factory man. Blonde hair, 'specially as bright as mine, weren't all that common. Meant people knew me in a damn heartbeat, 'specially with my braids and the blue in my hair. Blue to match our uniform coats, bright blue with gold buttons. Braids, well, the Ke-Han wore their hair in knotted braids, supposedly to mark how many of ours they'd killed. I'd decided to fuckin' return the favor.

Fishing through the jewel-box on a shelf, I found my favorite earrings, heavy Ke-Han gold hoops. I put them in and headed out into the hall. I was heading for the common room, but I only got halfway there before Adamo caught me. 

He bawled me out about disobeying orders an' knife-fighting in the city proper, which by that he meant in Charlotte or Miranda. We’d had quite a few talks ‘bout what was a fair fight and what was murdering a man in broad daylight. Down in Molly nobody gave a damn if you killed a body in a knife-fight. 

Way I see it was if I had a knife and the other man had a knife, it was a damn fair fight. Only unfair thing about is some people being better'n others at killing. 

Now I'd been mad enough to fight but that wasn't why I'd gone out. I shouted right back at Adamo, though, and let him think I had. Didn't no damn body need to know 'bout my baby brother, the little Cindy scholar who could barely hold his own in anything other'n book learning. He was damn smart but he was a damn _fucking_ fool, my brother was. 

A damn _unlucky_ son-of-a-bitch too, with that bit with th'Esar himself! Now he was gonna be all mixed up in what we'd been careful to keep him out of. 

Balfour Vallet was a damn fine example of the kind of fucked-up shit that happened when people knew pilots had little brothers. And mine? He weren't cut out for it, no way no how. 

So I had my dragon an' he had his books and we kept it secret we knew eachother. Everyone knew I was from Molly: practically nobody knew he was. Not any Molly orphan could teach themselves to fuckin' read _and_ write, let alone learn themselves the two different languages needed to get into the 'Versity. Most Mollyrats couldn't even make their mark, fishermen and thieves and whores and worse from the time they could walk. So he said he was from one of the orphan houses in lower Charlotte, an' no-one needed to know the fuckin' shitstain that was his birthplace.

Same one that I wore proud on my sleeve. I didn't give a damn who knew, 'cause I was proving them all I was from Molly and I was fucking worth something.

I had been in a decent mood after drinking with my little brother, but Adamo’d ruined all that now. I headed for the commons anyway: it was either that or sulk in my room and I was bored to shit doing that already. 

There was a burst of mixed laughter as I reached the door. I stopped there and peered in: seemed most everybody was there, like as not ‘cause we were all bored as fuck bein’ cooped up like so many fighting cocks. 

Ivory was at the piano, as usual, mindlessly playing the same five notes over and over, which grated something fucking awful. I might pick a fight with him tonight, Adamo’s rules be damned. We weren’t supposed to fight in the Airman, which was a rule he’d laid down when he caught me an’ Ivory going at it with knives a few years back. He was sure he was the best, and I was sure I was, an we’d been drunk enough to try to settle it out once an’ for all. Got a wicked scar to remember that fight by, but so did Ivory, a good nasty one on his chest.

Ghislain, Evariste, Luvander and Magoughin were all playing cards: Magoughin had just finished telling a naughty joke. I recognized the grin he wore and the way Compagnon was laughing: high-pitched and just short of a giggle. He and Merritt were making popcorn at the hearth.

Jeannot and Ace were at the far side of the room by the open window, smoking, saying nothing to eachother. Probably there so they wouldn’t have to talk to nobody. 

Raphael was on the couch reading a book, and Balfour and Niall were playing chess. 

Balfour glanced sidelong at the door, warily: he was always watching and saw damn near everything, but he kept his mouth fuckin’ shut. 

Ghislain noticed and grinned at me, the infuriating bastard, but he was a bit too big to be picking a fight with. Balfour was an easier target, and closer too, but he knew my tricks and was still watching. The moment I made a move for him he’d probably be under the table quick as that.

Luvander turned to see what Ghislain was grinning about, and made a rude face, like he’d stepped in shit.

Well, that settled it. Cracking my knuckles, I headed in. Little blonde bitch was about to be reminded I didn’t take shit from nobody.

Less than an hour later, Adamo was roaring at us all about fighting and the destruction of crown property and how that was the fifth table these past two months, and I was still pissed off. 

I’d be sporting a damn fine black eye to meetin’ my brother tomorrow, thanks to Magoughin.

Everyone else looked about as pissed as I was, but I was doing them a favor, like. If they were all mad nobody was worrying about what was going to happen tomorrow. I knew, an’ I knew there had never been anything to fuckin’ worry about even before I’d known what was gonna go down. Th’Esar couldn’t touch us, after all. We were the Dragon Corps, heroes of the war.

And if he thought a little lecturing was gonna do shit with us, he was damn wrong.


	3. Thom: Introductions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This dragged on FOREVER I was as relieved as Thom when I got to the end. In fact I started to copy/paste chunks of text, I got tired of typing it all. Headcanon starts now, patching in bits and pieces to fill out the skeletal framework of the rest of the Airmen, because canonly in Havemercy we only really get Rook, some of Balfour and Adamo, a bit more of Ghislain and Jeannot, and very little of the rest. It's sad. I'm rectifying this grievous error.

Unfortunately for my mild hangover, Marius showed up early to try to show me where the Airman was. I let him, despite a mild protest that everyone in the city knew where it was. It was hard not to. But I went, and resisted much of his attempts at conversation by protesting a headache. Which was true enough, after all. I was also not feeling very kindly inclined towards him, as he seemed to think I would be. For a magician used to dancing in political intrigue, the reward was perhaps a greater spur than the potential for disaster. He had been kind to me, so I tried to be so in return.

“I think you can do this, Thom,” he assured me.

“I will try, sir. Try not to worry about me.” My smile was a bit thin, perhaps. 

“You’re green, Thom.” Marius frowned at me. I had no doubt I was, I was feeling queasy. The swaying of the hansom was not pleasant to a hangover. “They’re trained to smell fear, you know.”

Well, all they’d get off me today would be vodka fumes. At least, this morning. I intended to wash up before I met the men I was supposed to reform. 

When we returned to my dorms I did just that, and dressed again in my best jacket and waistcoat. I really needed to find a minute to put those missing buttons back on...Marius was waiting, eager to help and provide transportation. I packed up the rest of my belongings, and away we went to the palace for the second time in as many days. 

“Let’s have a review,” he proposed.

I already knew the names of the Dragon Corps, as did any average citizen, but Marius was trying to be helpful, so I obliged him. 

“Chief Master Sergeant Adamo is the leader of the corps. I’m to direct all plans, questions, and grievances to him, and report only to him. Anything else will be seen as insubordination, and I need his support or I’ll have no more luck than a three-legged stray cat in in Molly.” 

This was not Marius’s original phrasing, and for a moment he looked puzzled before he recalled what exactly might happen to any stray animal that didn’t move fast enough in Molly: poverty in the extreme could be found there, and anything and everything could be used to supplement a stewpot in desperation. Cats included. (Sadly less palatable than one might think, and very gamey.)

“And the others?” Marius pressed. 

“I’ve devised a helpful mnemonic device: By Night, I’ll Always Remember My Effective and Judicious Lecturer Marius’s Companionable Guidance.”

“Very kind.”

“Of course. Balfour, Niall, Ivory, Ace, Raphael, Merritt, Evariste, Jeannot, Luvander, Magoughin, Compagnon, and Ghislain.” I tried for all of that in one breath and very nearly didn’t make it. I also didn’t add that half of those were nicknames anyway, and the real assortment of names would make for an impossible mnemonic composed mainly of consonants. 

“You’ve missed one,” Marius informed me. “Rook, I believe, pilot of Havemercy. He’s the one who started this mess.”

Ah, right. Only Rook was, as with some of the others, a nickname, and I’d known him before his name was Rook. Many in Molly had, in fact, a fact of which they were incredibly proud of as a whole. _After_ he’d become a dragon rider. Before, he’d just been another no-account and no-name orphan on the streets, doing his damndest to survive, and not worthy of any notice. I rolled a shrug at Marius.

“He’ll just have to be the one I forgot, then.”

Marius clapped my shoulder. “Well Thom, are you ready?”

Ready to plunge into chaos, disaster, and uncertainty? No, I was not. I preferred my quieter dorm life. Students didn’t get quite as loud as soldiers.

“Yes,” I answered anyway. “Marius, you’re more nervous than I am.”

“No, I’m not,” he said, tugging at his beard all the while - which meant he was nervous and trying not to show it, and failing miserably. 

In order to spare his nerves, I sent him off at the very doorstep of the palace...and instantly regretted it as I found myself confused in the maze of hallways. My brother was the one with a head for navigation, not me, and after a few circles I stared up at the courageous - and much younger - statue of the current Esar with a very foul feeling of frustration. 

“Bastion,” I spat at him, then jumped nearly a foot in the air when a voice spoke behind me.

“Oh, are you lost?”

I turned and found a young man my own age, with the dark hair and pale complexion of a nobleman. He had the broad accent of a country noble, and was fiddling with his kidskin gloves. He was also wearing the dark blue coat with gold buttons and the high Cheongju collar that was the uniform of the Dragon Corps. For a wild moment he seemed all-too-familiar, before I realized where I had seen his features before.

This, then was Balfour Vallet. And he bore a startling resemblance to his older brother, Amery. Not a wonder my own brother could barely stand him: I had only met Amery once and even I could see the similarity.

Then he tilted his head and smiled, and that clinched it: I remembered that particular gesture intimately from that single meeting.

“I’m Balfour,” he offered, and I held out my hand: he was most genteel as he shook it. 

The slightly too-large kidskin gloves, then, were also Amery’s. “Thom, from the ‘Versity. I’m supposed to meet with you and the rest of the corps in the atrium, only I can’t seem to find my way there.”

“Oh!” he said, with a rush of gladness that lit his grey-blue eyes and surprised me. “I thought I was late! Merritt stole my alarm clock, you see, to fish the bells out of it. Come along, then, it’s this way.”

He set off ahead of me, and I followed along, his tall black boots tapping smartly against the tiles. In short order we arrived at the atrium: it had glass walls and a black-and-white chequered floor that made me feel like a small plebe piece in a game of Knights and Margraves. No doubt when the sun was shining it would be very warm in here, but it was overcast today and the temperature quite bearable. Raucous laughter died away as Balfour and I rounded the corner. 

Meekly, he went to take his place, sitting in a row of fourteen gold-backed chairs. Alone, I stepped up on the dias, and had a rush of nerves that made my fingers feel cold and my face numb. I hated public speaking, it terrified me.

“Well, if it isn’t himself,” my brother drawled, and instantly I flushed with chagrin and annoyance at his casually insulting tone: and yes there was a little bit of gratefulness there too. He’d just refocused me entirely.

Rook, in all his infamous glory: his coat was unbuttoned, his tall boots slouched, his blonde hair in knotted braids of the Ke-Han style, with streaks of royal blue at his temples. His was the lazy, self-satisfied air of a cat in the cream; his was the unrepentant smug smirk. His blue eyes were pale as ice, his nose crooked from an old break. There was a crescent-moon shaped scar under his left eye. To anyone else, his expression was cruel, as some artists portray beauty with too much spite and malice. I knew the light in his eyes to be amusement, though, and that twist of his smile meant he was doing his damned best not to laugh at me.

The annoyance surged into indignation, and I felt my expression settle into firmness. I took ahold of my nerves as firmly as I would a horse’s reins, and took a deep breath. Damn him, I wouldn’t falter and I definitely wouldn’t do anything as stupid as faint from nerves.

I’d never live it down.

“Come to teach us all to talk and act like the noblesse and keep our fuckin’ private-like?” Rook continued, leaning forward and making a lewd Molly gesture between his legs. “ ‘Cuz we’ve been waitin’ on you. And I hear, in some places, it’s rude to keep esteemed guests waiting.”

The damnable bastard. Today was going to be one of those days where I wondered why on earth I loved him, I could tell already.

“Rook, sit the fuck back and shut the fuck up,” said the eldest, a heavyset man with an even heavier brow and a jaw like a nutcracker. His grizzled hair was cut short and his beard looked more like he’d forgotten to shave than anything else. “Your pardon,” he added to me, in politer tones. 

“Chief Sergeant Adamo,” I acknowledged, nodding respectfully to the man. 

“That’s right.” Adamo’s tone was firm, a commanding voice and presence. His dark eyes looked me over and I had the feeling he found me wanting. 

“So when’s the sensitivity start?” Rook drawled. As usual, he’d mastered the art of sitting back but not shutting the fuck up. The airman beside him giggled. The day Rook missed the chance to mouth off, he was dead.

“Rook,” Adamo growled, and lesser men would have cowered. My brother simply settled in his chair with a broader grin and a merry spark in his eyes that told of mischief. He was obeying merely for the moment, because it was convenient. From the gimlet eye Adamo was giving him, Adamo knew it, too. 

The hierarchical system was becoming clear: Adamo ruled in name and form, but not absolutely. From the way the other men were watching Rook (some in disapproval, some with amusement) they would all take their cues from him. Rook was not a strategic leader, nor a charming one. He could be harsh, cruel, and uncompromising. But he had the attitude that he was going to take on the world, and you had better stand aside or get in line behind him, or he was going to go right over you. With a forceful personality like that, it wasn’t a wonder the other airmen would let him charge forth first.

Especially not with the years of testing Rook’s mettle now behind them: they knew of his wicked temper and his infinitely creative retaliation when giving tit for tat.

As did I.

“Let’s start with introducing ourselves,” I suggested, and wished I sounded half as confident as Rook did. I waited for a moment. No-one volunteered, and I narrowed my eyes at Rook. He simply grinned back, all teeth and laughing eyes. At last, as if it were being dragged out of him by screws, Adamo cleared his throat. 

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it with all my heart. At least _someone_ was going to be cooperative.

“Tell us how it’s done,” he said, a little grudgingly, and I perceived he was trying to be kind without showing it, so as not to make me any more of a target than I was already making of myself. 

“Your name, which dragon you fly, and something the others might not know about you,” I answered, taking another deep breath and reminding myself not to roll my fingers against my thumbs.

“Something private?” the giggler asked, with interest: he was blonde, too, but a muddy dishwater blonde and very curly, with cheerful brown eyes. From Rook’s descriptions, I knew him to be Compagnon.

“How private?” Balfour interjected with immediate anxiety. 

“It can be anything at all.” I tried to give him some reassurance without actually singling him out, taking Adamo’s lead. I knew very well of the malicious inclinations of men in groups, and how the joking could turn viciously cruel. 

“Right,” said Adamo, grimly. “Well, I’m Chief Sergeant Adamo. Proudmouth’s my girl. And if another of you little shits brings up ‘Mary’ Margrave, it’s dog rations for you for a month afterwards.”

There was another silence. Compagnon gaped: Balfour had taken off his gloves and was worrying them between his fingers as if he sought to tear them to shreds. Rook’s expression took on a sour note. He leaned forward again in a slow predatory slide.

“I’m not sure that constitutes a private detail,” I said, cautiously. 

“Doesn’t it?” Adamo raised one heavy brow at me, and his tone carried finality in it. 

“You’re not some fucking pillow-biter.” Rook slipped the words out like a knife between the ribs.

“I don’t believe that’s exactly what I said,” Adamo returned, as precise as any Margrave or professor for dictation, but with a sharp edge and with far more teeth bared than necessary. “He’s an acquaintance of mine.”

From the look on Rook’s face, I knew I had to step in before it came to blows, or got any uglier. As Rook opened his mouth again, I interrupted in a tone much calmer than I actually felt. “Thank you for volunteering to go second, Rook.”

His mouth snapped shut and the glare he turned on me was vicious. I flinched despite myself: he’d never laid a hand on me in a temper but his words could be just as painful. His lip curled and he leaned back in his chair, the motion no longer careless but coiled. “You already know my name,” he retorted.

Impossible man. 

“And the rest?” I prompted, raising an eyebrow. He bared his teeth, a promise of a later verbal lashing.

But he relented. “I fly Havemercy. She’s pretty famous. I bet you’ve heard of her.” Mouth shut like a trap. He was going to fight me every damned inch of the way, now that I’d set off his temper.

So be it. He’d taught me everything I knew about stubborn, after all. “And the last.”

With a roll of his shoulders, like a man throwing on a new coat, he tossed up a new facade, hiding his anger until later. He pretended to give the request deep thought, staring up at the ceiling and biting his ragged thumbnail. Finally he said, “I sure like fucking women.”

“That’s not exactly news,” Balfour muttered, darkly. 

“Well it’s true,” Rook went on, and opened his mouth to further extrapolate on the subject. 

“My name’s Balfour,” Balfour said, very quickly. “I fly Anastasia. We met in the hallway. I...I’m very fond of certain philosophical treatises.”

I instantly wondered what those were, and if I’d found a kindred soul in the joys of studying at last. I didn’t smile, but I know my face showed my sudden interest. Balfour gave a halfway sort of grin, an attempt at solidarity even though he knew it probably wasn’t in his best interest. 

“A lot of fuckin’ pillow-biters like philosophy,” Rook retorted in a cutting tone.

“Oh yes,” said Compagnon, with a giggle. “And d’you know where they like it?” Adamo gave him a look like melting steel, and he cleared his throat. “By which I mean to say, I’m Compagnon. I ride Spiridon, and I own the most thorough collection of indecent imprints in the entire city.”

“It’s true,” said a swarthy man with a hook nose and impossibly white teeth who was beside Compagnon. He sighed fondly.

“And you are?” I prompted.

He shrugged broad, graceful shoulders. He was a veritable giant, taller and broader even than Rook. “Ghislain. Compassus. My great-great-grandfather died for th’Ramanthe.”

I wasn’t very surprised: Ghislain had the burnt-sugar colouring and dark eyes of someone from and old Ramanthe family, one that had declined to interbreed with the Volstov invaders from the west. It was a rare thing to see in a man of our generation, unless he came from the nobility. I nodded to the next man, as not even Rook could turn that into a jibe or an insult. 

The man seated beside Ghislain had a chin sharp and pointed as an arrow. He looked bored, his legs stretched out in front of him and his eyes half-closed, and he paused midway through a yawn when he realized I was staring at him. 

“I think you’re up.” Ghislain elbowed him harder than seemed necessary, and he straightened up in his chair with a lithe motion. 

“I’m Ace.” He had bright red hair in a riot of thick ringlets and a sleep-thick voice, as though he’d only just woken up. His eyes, as he met mine, were a startling electric blue. “Thoushalt’s mine. When I was little my Mam caught me trying to take a swan dive off our terrace; ever since then I’ve wanted to be up in the air.”

“That is a load of horseshit,” Rook snorted with contempt. “What is that, a fuckin’ poem? You sound like Raphael.”

“Yes, and I so love it when you insult me where I can hear it, Rook.”

The man in question had black curly hair and was leaning out of his chair to call up the line. “You’re Raphael, then?” I asked.

He looked up at me with enormous dark eyes, as if he’d forgotten entirely I was in the room. When I nodded, he settled back in his chair and crossed his legs in a fluid motion. “Oh. I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized we’d reached my place in line yet.” Before I could decide if that was a jibe at me or an honest apology (I suspected the former), he went on: “I am Raphael. I’ve been blessed with flying Natalia, the beauty. Truth be told, I was getting very bored with the monotony of our days with hardly any battles to fight. Perhaps this will prove interesting.”

“Thank you, Raphael,” I said quickly, over a loud and disbelieving sound from Rook down at the far end. That had certainly been as flowery as I’d half-expected, from Rook’s complaints about the poet. “Next?”

There was a brief silence as everyone looked at the stragglers. 

“I’m Jeannot,” said another man with the dark hair and eyes of a Ramanthine, which meant that his family too must have been very old or very inbred. His nose was thin, like the blade of a knife, and his cheekbones were high and sharp. His tone was faintly disdainful. “I’m on Al Atan, and I’ve never seen the ocean at anything closer than a dragon’s height.”

“Oh,” said Balfour, from whom I hadn’t expected an outburst. He looked as though he’d just heard something very sad. “Sorry,” he said, by way of realizing he’d interrupted. “Only, I didn’t know that.”

“I told you he was a girl,” said Rook with savage triumph. “Got feminine parts between his legs, airman’s honor.”

I bit my tongue and counted slowly to five. I would not throw my boot at him, I would not. Balfour put his gloves back on and stared down at his hands.

“Merritt, I swear by the bastion, if you don’t sit still I am going to lynch you in the showers.”

At the opposite end of the line, a redhead entirely too freckly for his own good scowled in hurt dignity. His companion, a brown-haired man who’d spoken, turned in his chair to face me.

“This training, will it make Merritt less irritating?”

“Well,” I began.

“Fuck off, Evariste.” The freckled one crossed his arms across his chest, then his legs at the ankle, like a sullen child who’d been scolded.

Merritt, the fidgeter, and Evariste, the scholar. “Why don’t you two tell us something about yourselves.” 

Evariste chewed at his lip, hazel eyes thoughtful. His brown hair stood at ends, like he’d often tugged at it in thought. “I fly Illarion. What about me, what about me...oh yes! Once I ate a pound of butter.”

Compagnon giggled again. I decided such a stunt had probably been induced by hazing or dares, and that I did not want to know the outcome of that story. 

Merritt’s cheeks were stained bright red with either anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell which, and his brown eyes were resentful. “I’m Merritt,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got Vachir. My sister got married last month.”

“And you didn’t invite us to the wedding?” A man with mousy brown hair who’d turned his chair the wrong way around, seemingly for the sole purpose of leaning his arms across the back, turned his head to leer at Merritt, grey eyes merry. “Might have liked the opportunity of seeing your sister again.”

Adamo cleared his throat from the center of the room, as though he was growing short of patience. I was grateful, even if his impatience was sure to be directed toward me in due time.

“Oops,” said the man in the backward chair. His mouth would have looked distinctly feminine on anyone else, round and full as it was. He flashed a careless smile. “Niall. I fly Erdeni. I’ve found the perfect place to nap in th’Esar’s orchard, and I’m not telling a man of you where it is.”

“Fuck, Magoughin told us that joke last week,” Rook pounded his fist against the chair. Then, he smiled like a cat having helped himself not only to the canary, but to the entire Esarian aviary of birds. “It’s th’Esarina’s lap.”

Someone laughed, broad-faced and friendly. He waved one enormous shovel-pan hand in the air like a child at school eager for recognition.

“Magoughin?” I asked, even though I was fairly certain of the response, given Rook had always described him as ‘a fuckin’ giant bastard.’

“Chastity’s mine. And I collect jokes, of a sort,” he replied, brown eyes full of friendly cheer, his dark brown hair lazily wavy. “He’s Ivory,” Magoughin added helpfully, nodding to the man at his left, so blond and pale that he looked almost unreal. 

Rook's hair was a bright golden blonde: this man's hair very nearly white-blonde, and his eyes nearly colourless. “They call me that because I’m good at the piano,” he said, in a voice as dry as sandpaper. “Not because of my skin, so don’t even bother asking. Oh, and I ride Cassiopeia.”

“I-I wasn’t going to,” I assured him, quickly. They were a merry band of lunatics, it was true, but each and every detail - added to my brother's often-catty but very discerning remarks - would reveal their individual personalities to me. They were tied together into an intimate unit, living cheek-by-jowl, but not all of them were best-suited to such partnerships (my brother being one of them). I had already picked out several others who might have been happier working alone. 

“Luvander,” the final voice piped up, and I forced myself to acknowledge him politely instead of slumping to the floor with relief. This had been drawn out far longer than I thought it would, even accounting for Rook's recalcitrance. The final man wore dark hair tied back from his face, though it was obviously dyed black as his roots and eyebrows were blonde, and his coat was unbuttoned. His eyes were a faded soft blue. “I fly Yesfir, though I like to think it’s more as how she deigns to let me hop on once in a while. In any case, I really hate going last.”

“Ah,” I said, most cleverly, momentarily blanking on anything else to say in my relief. The first introduction over with, the ice broken, and my doomed campaign begun. “Well. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate the...enthusiasm some of you exhibited in sharing.”

“Whoa there just a second, ’Versity boy.” Rook had leaned forward in his chair again, eyes like twin chips of bright ice. “Where’s your introduction?”

“Well, as you may already know,” I returned, with a cheer I hoped didn't sound as forced as I was faking it, “my name is Thom, and I’ve never actually seen a dragon up close.”


	4. Rook: Afternoon Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again short, but we're getting to where Rook has a lot more to say. Rook is Suspicious About This. :|

The little _fucking shit_.

My brother knew how to get in the way, alright, put himself between me and my target and trip me up so I didn’t start a fight. It was his damned worst habit and I fucking hated how he’d do that to me. Never mind I didn’t normally think about fighting with Adamo, ‘cause he was a bit big for arguin’ with. And fuckin’ _especially_ on the topic of fuckin’ Cindy twists…!

I came back to the Airman fuckin’ mad enough to spit nails, an’ every damn man knew it, too. Only Adamo didn’t care, ‘cause Adamo was mad too, though not about the same things.

I’d known beforehand what we were going into: that Thom was gonna play at reforming us, give us a buncha words that meant nothing to anyone ‘cept the Margraves an’ the bastion members an’ ‘Versity students, tossed back and forth like birdies in some pussy game of badminton. Balfour had gone on about how it wasn’t actually a punishment in the letter, just in form, giving the Arlemagne a nice compromise that kept everyone happy, but I knew better. 

It was an attempt to fuckin’ call us to heel, by the’Esar. Like he could fuckin’ give us orders: like he could tarnish our fuckin’ shine in the eyes of the fuckin’ public. 

It was a fuckin’ shitshow and he was using my damn little brother to do it. 

I told Adamo I wasn’t gonna fucking attend any more sharing-and-caring sessions, and he told me I was or he’d string me out the fucking window by my _neck_ , even if I was the only damn one in the whole city who could fly Havemercy in a straight line. I told him I knew he wouldn’t, and his jaw got tight, and for a minute I thought he was gonna take a swing at me and I could finally get a good fight going when Ghislain slipped between us with the latest gossip from the palace. 

Apparently we were going to fuckin’ move Thom right into the Airmen itself, let him observe our day-to-day doings, and not accidentally feed him to one of the girls. (Ghislain’s own phrasing.)

The fucking _gall._

That _stank_ of some kinda shady horseshit, and using _my fucking little brother_ to do it.

This was _fucking_ why Thom an’ I still weren’t letting on we knew eachother.

And with him moving it in it was going to get a damn sight harder to do that. Thom weren’t as good of an actor as I was, had never been one for a long con. Short gigs, sure, he’d play the fool, but the drawn-out plans? He was shit at holding character an’ always had been. If he hadn’t been fuckin’ being himself, gentrified, at the ‘Versity, he’d never have made it so long without slipping up. 

“I’m flying out,” I told Adamo.

My head was always clearer in the air: I had too many damn things to think about and was too fucking mad to do it without killing somebody first.

“You aren’t,” Adamo returned, hard as dragonsteel. 

“Havemercy’s pissed,” I added, and it was true and didn’t just mean _I_ was pissed. Havemercy liked flying better than anything, and being grounded for too long made her cranky. When she got cranky, dragonboys started getting hurt, even if these days I was the only one who touched her.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Adamo. “You’ve already had your ride this month, same as the rest of the boys. It isn’t my fault none of you takes the time to understand rationing a thing out once in a while.”

Th’Esar had come to some sort of agreement with Adamo more than ten years back about how we each got one free ride a month during peacetimes. I guess he thought that any damage we could do up in the air was miles less than we could do on the ground, getting stir-crazy and all riled up at one another without nothing to let off the steam.

But mostly, we figured, he’d agreed for the dragons, partly ’cause keeping them locked up all the time made them cranky, and partly because he thought it made them rusty, too. They wouldn’t rust, not with the way we polished our girls when they asked for it, but let the damn fool think what he liked as long as it let us get into the air. 

“I’m takin’ her out,” I repeated, and that was final-like. He wasn’t going to string me up, and he could give me dog rations all he liked knowing I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about it (eaten less and worse growin’ up in Molly), and he sure as fuck couldn’t dismiss me. Have wouldn’t take another rider, long as I was still breathing. 

Reason they didn’t want us flying regular-like with the girls was because they wanted us to be careful. The tech and magic behind the dragons was all hush-hush, and it wouldn’t do to have us get crashed or caught by the Ke-Han and them start building their own air force. They wanted us to be careful and precise...but most of all good, and I was the best. Everyone knew it, even Ace though he was too stubborn to admit it, and Adamo, who was smarter than he looked. I was the best pilot they had and Havemercy was the best dragon built so far, and they couldn’t afford to lose either of us. 

“I ain’t going far. Just gonna take her up, give the city a fuckin’ show, cheer her up so she don’t maul no fuckin’ body.” And so I didn’t either.

Adamo stared me down, dark eyes hard. “Fine. Thirty minutes.”

Which meant shit, and we both knew it. We both knew I’d won that round, too.

I headed down the long hall, past the rooms and and the kitchen and the showers, and went in through what they called the “leisure door,” the great big door with the sloping hallway down we took when we weren’t dropping straight into the girl’s bays for the raids. The wide, low-ceilinged hall below was dimly lit at this time of day and smelled of heated metal and burning things, like a blacksmith’s forge and a great building on fire at the same time. My palms were itching for the feel of the harness and the feel of Havemercy up in the air. 

See, unlike the rest of the boys, I knew every inch how to harness my girl up myself and prep her for a flight. I hadn’t been properly trained through th’Esar’s damn schooling program. I’d volunteered to be one of the muckboys who ran around after the real Airmen, keeping the harnesses polished and the dragonhide gleaming and all that bullshit, running around with mops and buckets and scraping and bowing with yessirs and nosirs and making a damn fool of myself. I’d volunteered at just the right time, when Havemercy was fresh off the table and being real picky and precise about nobody taking her up for a flight no matter how they coaxed, until she saw me. It was love at first sight, only we both knew the other didn’t have no heart to speak of for loving. She’s just as beautiful now as she was then, even if she’s got a clip off her left wing where we got a little too close to the real fighting one time, but we turned the tide that time an’ sent the Ke-Han packing back up over the Cobalts, so we did damn good anyway.

The two dragonboys polishing the harnesses scattered when I came in: they stayed damn clear of me an’ Havemercy. Have’d mauled for than one poor shit, and I had my own temper and wouldn’t stand for no bowing or scraping or fuckin’ staring like I was some blessed saint in a street parade. 

Harness jingling in my gloved hands, I headed down the hall to Havemercy’s bay. “Hey, sweetheart.”

She yawned and flicked her tail, metal scraping over stones. “Bell didn’t ring,” she said, even as she raised herself up. She knew what the harness, my riding boots and gloves meant. 

“Just a spin,” I told her, slipping through the bars to start hooking up the harness. She lowered her head so I could clip the reins to the links on her jaw, then crouched on her forelegs so I could get the safety straps hooked to the saddle on her back. They were made one with the girls, them being metal and all. 

“Good,” she rumbled. “I’m getting rusty.”

“Shit, you ain’t.”

“Aren’t,” Have sniffed. “You common little fucker.”

At first the powers that be had been concerned I was going to be a bad influence on Havemercy, the pride of the entire dragon-fleet, but she wasn’t some prissy mincing high lady, just power and musculature and sleek deadly grace, and she didn’t fuck around with being proper even from the start. I taught her all the good curses and she’d melt any man tried to separate us, leastways until I could get my knife in between his ribs and stick him like a pig.

I got the straps clipped on then swung myself up: as I fastened those, one of the dragonboys got the bars on her stall down, and Have lurched into motion as I finished with the buckles and slipped my boots into the stirrups. The girls all moved heavy on the ground, claws gouging into the stone: it wasn’t until we got in the air they were fast as lightning itself. 

Have climbed the ramp leading out the edge of the courtyard and twisted her head to peer down at the city below, the Airman perched on a hill in Miranda just above a sheer drop to the street below. It was a damn fine view, but we’d get a better one inna minute.

“So,” said Have, making a thoughtful noise like metal grinding. “Any direction in particular?”

“Anywhere,” I told her, snapping my flight goggles on. We needed them for fighting, when the smoke and the ash and debris grew thick in the dark. Not so much in the daytime, but all I needed was to catch a bug in the eye and be even more pissed. “Everywhere. Shit, Have, let’s make sure this city ain’t forgot about us.”

She snorted and unfurled her wings with the sharp whistle of metal cutting the air. They caught the sunlight and gleamed brighter than the gilded onion domes of the Basquiat. People would stare and point, because my girl knew how to get attention. I couldn’t help the laugh, as she crouched and lunged into the sky with a heavy downstroke of her wings. The leaping plunge, the snarl of the wind, the rising hum of magic and steel beneath me, the thundering strokes of her wings full of so much power.

I ducked low against her neck, currents buffeting about me, until she could steady out with easier strokes. Nothing on my mind except the flight, the air currents, altitude and the steady hum of Have’s magic beneath me. Up in the air nothing but that mattered, nothing but me an’ Have an’ the wind.

On a clear day, a no-war-fucking-lull day, flying could be as smooth as a virgin’s thighs, and as soft and easy, too. On a rough day, it was like riding the eye of a storm, snaking metal and magic under me.

“Let’s go to the water,” Have suggested, even as she gained altitude in steady rowing strokes, body undulating just the slightest bit beneath me.

The water: she didn’t mean the river, curving broad and steady around the edge of the city. She meant the river harbor that led out into the sea, down at the bottom of the hill. 

Thremedon was built on a hill in layers, tiers like a fuckin’ fancy wedding cake. Here in the air, as Have reached a steady high and leveled herself out, it was easy to see the city below, spread out small like a portrait in miniature. Miranda on top, Charlotte in the middle, and Molly down at the bottom: right below us, directly on top, was the Basquiat. It rose from the center of Miranda, tall and arrogant as any one of the damned magicians and Margraves who occupied the place, with swirled onion-shaped domes set in too many colors. The only thing I liked about it was that it near rivaled the palace in size, and that pissed th’Esar off real nice every now and again when he caught sight of it out the windows. Or so I’d heard.

Nearest landmark to the Basquiat - stuck up on a nice little hill of its own, neat as you please - was the ’Versity Stretch. That was where good boys and girls went to drain their mamas and papas of their hard-earned cash in order to learn how to speak all proper and read things in dusty books that happened to no one left alive today. ’Versity students didn’t have much money, of course, after spending it all on books and whatever the fuck, so if you followed the Stretch it’d run you right into the Rue. The Rue d’St. Difference - where you could buy anything except slaves and sex - was where the merchants established themselves and vied for customers every sunup to sundown. Foreigners coming to the city from elsewhere had a real problem with the Rue, since it was the only place where the roads ran straight instead of all crabbing crooked in the same direction. 

Niall, who spent more time on the ground and in the city than any self-respecting Airman should, said that this year the Rue was crowded with milliners, and women in fancy wide-brimmed hats with feathers and ribbons. I tried to get him to bring me one back so we could stick it on Balfour, but he went on whining about the price until I wanted to punch him in the face; and then he said he was never going to do me any favors, ever.

Whatever. Adamo would only have torn me a new one for it, anyway.

The roads went crooked again sure as rain as soon as they bent off into Charlotte. The middle sister was where most men found their sport. Grouped together were the unmistakable red roofs and pointed, storied buildings marking the Amazement, Volstov’s entertainment district, filled with opera and theatre and a bit of whoring just to keep things interesting afterward. ’Course there were restaurants, if coffee after was more your bag, but you were like to be laughed straight back into Miranda with a priss attitude like that. Charlotte didn’t coddle, and it made no bones about someone’s ideas of segregation. If they wanted you out, they’d let you know. It was only a madman who’d want to live in Charlotte after Miranda, but you had to respect her attitude.

Through the center, just to one side of the Amazement, ran a road that was sharp and jagged as a lightning bolt. This was man-made. Wolf’s Run, where the Provost’s men made their digs, and they didn’t have time for meandering around slow, sloping curves. The Run was located special in the center of things, so the Wolves could duck into upper or lower as neat as they pleased whenever they had to keep the peace. I don’t know why they didn’t just stick the whole thing on the Mollyedge and keep the troubles out that way, but there’s no accounting for what some people think is sensible.

I didn’t have any desire to fly over Molly - where you _could_ buy slaves and sex - with Ha’penny Lane, Tuesday Street, and an over-fucking-abundance of dirty, diseased urchins being its only commodities and sole export of the lowest maiden with her skirts soaking in ocean brine. No, I didn’t want to get near it, and not even to get to the ocean. I said as much to Have.

“Fuck that,” she said. “I wanted to see the boats.”

I relented, but only because it was Have. “Fine.”

The harbor was a deceptive place, clean and bustling as it looked from the air. Thremedon wasn’t a port town in that we needed the trade or nothing, but boats came and left just as often as they pleased since the Ke-Han had no use for the seas. They’d been fucked over more than once trying to cross them, which was why it’d been such a big surprise when they’d snuck up and took the Kiril Islands right out from under th’Esar’s nose. Took ’em a good few years to manage that one, and not from their fighting skills or nothing - because it took them that long to get across the water without capsizing in the storms.

Thremedon’s harbor was filled with ships built by people who knew what they were doing, else I didn’t think they’d have made it to us at all. Caelian barges with their dark orange sails like buildings on fire; little merchant vessels from Arlemagne; the fishing boats of the Molly-dwellers that were almost too small and insignificant to make out, like everything else that made up part and parcel of Molly. I only felt sorry for the poor bastards who didn’t realize where they’d landed, smack in the middle of the city’s poorest and filthiest.

I was so fucking glad to be out of there.

Havemercy was humming a tune I’d taught her myself, picked up in one of the bars and memorized ’cause I knew she’d eat it up with a spoon. The bawdy songs were her favorite, and I could tell when she was in high spirits because of when she broke out with one. Anyone who says the dragons can’t have emotions ’cause they’re made of metal’s never flown one, see, though that sort of talk never bothered me. Have and I understood each other.

“Feeling better?” I asked before she could get to the line about the earl with a girl on each knee.

“Are you?” Havemercy beat her wings extra-hard, like she was jumping in the air, and evened out again.

I thought about it. “Always better when we’re off the ground,” I answered, at length.

“Bastion’s own truth,” she said, and went back to her song.

It had been much longer ‘n half an hour when we got back, the taste of seasalt on my lips, but Adamo didn’t say one fuckin’ word. I unharnessed Have and spent the rest of the afternoon in her bay, polishing the smeared bugs and coal-smoke off her scales until she gleamed like the day she’d been made. 

So they were gonna move Thom in sometime. Couldn’t nobody say when, Thom because he didn’t remember the damndest details and the rest ‘cause they thought they were gonna haveta protect him from me. Anyone else, they’d’ve been damn right. Not this time, though. 

We were gonna haveta play this one by ear, an’ listen right sharp, until we knew what th’Esar was playing at with this move. 

Surely not even th’Esar was dumb enough to think my fuckin’ little brother, mousy little wishy-washy shit, was gonna do any fuckin’ thing to make us all step in line. So there was another game afoot. I had no fuckin’ care for politics, but I knew how the game was played just fine. Only difference between rich an’ poor people were the stakes an’ how many fucking jewels they wear while they’re climbing over their neighbors to get higher. I couldn’t suss it out just yet, but whatever this was, it wasn’t just making the Arlemagne shut up an’ making us look bad...though it was that too. 

Hell if I knew. Maybe th’Esar did think my idiot brother could bring us all to heel, and I was just overthinking this.

But I didn’t think so. You don’t live long in Molly if you ain’t fuckin’ sharp. A body as couldn’t earn a living in that shithole don’t get no charity, and if you couldn’t fuckin’ _keep_ what you’ve earned you don’t survive long either. I’d kept us both afloat even in Molly and I weren’t nobody’s fool. 

Thom was a damn fool, but he was a damn fool from Molly’s lowest gutters. 

And that made him sharper than most.

Together we’d figure out what in hell was going on, and what we were going to do about it.

But with Have humming so many dirty songs, I had another itch I needed scratching, and as the evening grew dim, I headed out to the Amazement, to Our Lady of a Thousand Fans. I knew just the right whore I wanted to tickle tonight. 

Now on the fuckin’ whole, only thing different ‘bout the girls at Our Lady was they teach ‘em a few more exotic things so they could fuckin’ charge you more. But whores was whores, no matter where you went. You just pay for how clean they might be, an’ I weren’t in the fuckin’ mood to catch anything nasty. So to Our Lady I went, and was sure to wear my flight gloves. Gets a man better service everywhere. Not much being a damn big hero won’t get you.


	5. Thom: The Airman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thom's a little bit short this time, but that's okay. Thom settles into the Airman, and he and Rook plot by night

I was delivered to the very doorstep of the Airman by Marius and his carriage, ever-helpful. He’d treated me to a fine dinner last night, which I had chosen to take as congratulatory rather than consolatory, because otherwise I might’ve thrown a platter of roast duck at him, and that would have been a sad waste of very good food. 

Balfour and Chief Sergeant Adamo met me at the door, on the whole a very assuring welcoming party. As the door opened, I could hear a melody picked out on a piano within: there was also the scent of clove cigarettes, which I recognized as certain professors and Margraves of the ‘Versity smoked. Above all that, though, was the smell of fire.

It wasn’t simply something as commonplace as the sulfurous gasp of a match struck or a candle lit. It was real fire, the killing kind, the sort that ripped through cities and trapped children in their little rooms—fire hot enough to melt metal—and the thick, dark smoke groaning at its heel, cruel and suffocating. I didn’t like fire of that unpredictable, violent nature. I had my reasons for that, too: every child growing up in Molly, with its crowded _wooden_ housing, feared fire and the devastation it could cause.

My stomach turned over at the scent. I thought I had grown used to the smell of metal and magic and gasoline and fire my brother now carried with him at all times, but the faint echo he bore was nothing like the full intensity of the smell that washed over me. 

I swallowed hard and stepped inside the door, carrying my slightly-shabby suitcase. 

“Your quarters’re this way,” Adamo grunted.

Balfour fiddled with the thumb of his left glove. “It’s only a couch,” he said, apologetically. “And a sort of... standing curtain. It won’t be very quiet. Niall wakes up early and he likes to sing while he makes breakfast, but in any case - I wanted to tell you - if you wake up and your hand feels funny, wet sort of, whatever you do don’t bring it up to your face.”

“Oh,” I said, and grimaced. I could easily imagine several different noisome substances my hand could be dipped in. Balfour’s face fell.

Adamo stifled what might have been a laugh or might have been a cough behind the palm of his broad hand. “If you’re stupid enough to fall for it,” he said gruffly, “then you get what you deserve.”

“No one deserves a blue face,” Balfour said quietly.

Personally, I thought that if it was only paint, then I should count my lucky stars, but Balfour was a noble and no doubt hadn’t faced the appalling depths of filth on encountered on a daily basis in Molly. 

As I already knew, the Airman was a hideous, blunt building, erected in the modern style and designed for efficiency over beauty. It was somewhat nicer on the inside, I was relieved to note, though not by very much. It was also a mess. There were boots strewn about the hall way, and coats in disarray, so that I almost tripped over one. There was even a shirt and what appeared to be a pair of ladies’ undergarments.Bachelor living at its finest, of course. I wondered what unpleasant smells the permeating scent of burning and the clove cigarettes masked, and found myself quite relieved I might never have cause to know.

I wasn’t their maid. I was, in theory, their instructor in the skeleton of basic decency; I would teach them how to interact as decent humans rather than hooligans and fraternity club boys. What they did with their women’s undergarments was up to them.

“And there’s Niall’s bunker, and Magoughin’s,” Balfour was in the process of telling me, “and there’s the first row of showers. You sign up in advance, unless you’ve been out on a raid, and then you’ve got first priority whether you’ve signed up or not.” 

Ah, so I’d heard, from the ash that rimed the creases of Rook’s skin and clothes and the grease that blackened his fingernails constantly, and the creases of his hands. He looked like one of the coal-factory workers sometimes, when he met me, and that was what he passed as when playing at disguise. But I wasn’t supposed to know, and so I asked with all the innocence I could muster: “Why is that?”

I had once very good at playing the clueless fool, at least, to my brother’s charming witty con-man. 

“Oh,” Balfour said, as if it were perfectly common sense, “to wash off all the ash, of course.”

“Ah,” I said, pleased I could still pull off my role.

“That’s the common room, the one for music and smoking - and there’s the private common room, for when you’re engaged with a..ah...companion for the evening, or the afternoon, or whenever you’ve got off-hours.”

A belch of perfume hit me from beyond the half-open door. It reminded me of my childhood, growing up in the back room of a whorehouse, and I stepped quickly past it.

“That’s command,” Adamo said, jerking a hand toward a room across the way. “You don’t go in there.”

“Yes,” Balfour agreed. “No one goes in there but Chief Sergeant.”

“Duly noted,” I assured them both.

I wondered where the rest of the men were, or if they’d sent Balfour and Adamo ahead to lull me into a false sense of security while they waited just around the corner like jumping spiders, ready to strike. I certainly wouldn’t put it past any of them, and least of all my brother.

“And there’s my bunker, and there’s Rook’s, and there’s Merritt’s,” Balfour continued, still giving me the grand tour. I was thankful: I didn’t think I would be spending much time inside any of these forbidding little rooms, their doors staunchly, disapprovingly, locked against me, but it was nice to know who was where and what room I definitely shouldn’t enter looking for the bathrooms or the kitchens. I made particular note of where Rook’s door was, and was dismayed to realize it was not very close to the alcove they had designated for me. That could make things difficult.

“You may notice the rooms are all scattered-like,” Adamo said. Indeed, I had, and I said as much. “The docking area’s below,” he explained. “Each man sleeps above his dragon.”

“When we’re needed, the air-raid bell sounds,” Balfour added. “There’s a trapdoor for each of us that lets us down into each of our private bays directly.”

“The long way ’round isn’t one you need to know, either,” Adamo said. “The docks are off limits.” And that was most emphatically the end of that.

“Understood,” I assured him, though I suspected Rook might sneak me down there anyway, even if I didn’t ask.

“Now, Rook’s out tonight,” Adamo added, privately, as Balfour’s eyes moving between the two of us. Not a wonder it was so quiet, then, and I had to ponder if they’d arranged my arrival specifically for when he’d been gone or if it was a fortunate accident. Adamo’s next words answered that speculation. “We thought it’d be for the best. And, knowing him, he won’t be back for a day at the least.”

Gone whoring or fighting, then, not drinking. Drinking, he’d come back and hole up somewhere safe to sober up again. I nodded. 

“Here you are,” Balfour piped up, gesturing to a plain standing screen that had been pulled haphazardly across an alcove. This was where the couch was.

I examined my new living space - it could hardly be called a room - with resignation. It was a largish couch, I’d give them that. Of course, it made sense that th’Esar would spare no luxury when it came to his precious Dragon Corps. I wondered if he even knew the extent of what went on down at the Airman where his influence wasn’t physically present. I wondered how much I was going to need to omit from my reports, and how I would know what was to be deemed information to which th’Esar should be privy. I felt the onset of a headache creeping from my temples to the bridge of my nose, knowing that if I got it wrong, the Airmen would suffer and possibly try to feed me to the dragons.

You are accountable only to Rook and the Chief Sergeant, I reminded myself. I would make my report with Rook's help, then Adamo himself could discern what information he wanted to share with the head of the nation. That would save me from trying to navigate the pitfalls of that particular arrangement somewhat. I did not at all cherish the deep anxiety fostering in my gut that came from not knowing what to expect. I had no idea precisely why th’Esar thought I was going to have any effect on these men, or if he was simply trying to appease all sides without risking his own neck. If so, antagonizing the Airmen was not the way to go about it: throwing shit led to shit in your face, as they said in Molly. 

Rook and I would have to puzzle it out on our own: the’Esar wasn’t likely to say what he was up to in plain language, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t merely for reformation purposes that I had been placed here. 

“Ivory’s on your left.” Balfour tugged his right glove on tighter, gesturing farther down the hall to another room, which had been placed as all the rest: with no real rhyme or reason. The man who had designed the building must have been a genius or a madman or both. “He’s very quiet, so you might not be...bothered.” He tacked on this last as if he hoped very much that it were true. On my other side, Adamo snorted; he didn’t even bother trying to hide it.

I had never before felt so strongly the urge for a door of my very own that I could lock, not even when I’d been living in the very depths of Molly, where a lack of things to steal did not necessarily preclude break-ins. Rook I could withstand: the rest of the men, I wasn’t so sure.

“Well,” I said, and was promptly cut off by a bloodcurdling scream that echoed down the hallways.

“My books!”

“Ah,” said Balfour. “That will be Raphael.”

“My books,” said Raphael again, louder this time and with a quivering timbre to his voice, as though he was a volcano on the edge of eruption. “What have you done, you piss-drinking sons of Ke-Han whores?”

“Shit,” Adamo said, the curse torn rough as crushed cobblestone from his throat. “I’d better go. Docks’re off-limits,” he repeated to me, as though I were simple.

I could take no offense at his attitude, though, instead nodding to show that I really did understand. The Chief Sergeant was a man I did not want on any side but my own, and if that meant a little more bowing and scraping than usual, so be it. Besides, I could see he was only trying to be kind, in his own way, and I appreciate that immensely. 

He marched off down the hallway to the tune of a muffled crash, followed by a series of undignified hoots and hollers that sounded like nothing so much as an entire band of wild chimpanzees let loose from the zoo.

There was another scream.

“Madeline!”

“I bet it’s Niall and Compagnon,” said Balfour confidentially. “They’ve had this big secret project going for weeks now. Papier-mâché. I guess they ran out of paper.”

“Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Balfour nodded. “It was going to be a scale model of the city, only Compagnon gave it these, you know, enormous breasts, so now it’s just a misshapen sort of woman. She’s in the common room - not the private one, but the other one.”

“And that’s . . . Madeline?” I asked, clearing my throat to mask the urge to laugh.

“Yes,” said Balfour. “She’s kind of like our mascot.”

The rest of the evening passed in bouts of quiet interspersed with shouts and raucous jokes. The men trooped by my little alcove and either commented to me or didn’t, and dinner was served in the kitchen in a concerted effort by Ghislain and Balfour. I recalled Rook telling me how, years before he’d joined, the servants had all been frightened off by the Airmen and the dragons, leaving the men to fend for themselves when it came to cooking and cleaning. There were many dragonboys, of course, but the grubby little creatures straight from Molly or the streets didn’t have the same idea of cleanliness anyone else might. 

Saints know Rook and I certainly hadn’t. 

As the evening dimmed and night fell, the men all retired to various spaces. Steel doors were shut and the noise level died down. I began to arrange my belongings carefully, assuring they would be both safe and yet available for use when I needed them. This was a lengthy process, and I restarted several times as I considered the layout of my alcove. It wasn’t that late yet when I heard, out of the darkness, a curse and a voice both so familiar for a moment it barely registered.

And then it did. Ah. So Rook had come back early. 

“Oh.” I wanted to rush and poke my head out, to see what state he was in, but instead I remained, staring at the contents of my suitcase blindly as I listened for his footsteps. Was he drunk? Injured?

“Bastion fucking cunt,” he said, very softly. He had heard me and knew I was here.

There was silence, until I caught the soft scuff of a boot, and I nodded. Not hurt or drunk enough to matter, and he slipped around the edge of the screen as noiselessly as a cat. I sat back on my heels and looked up at him. He’d certainly been out whoring: he smelled of perfume, faintly. But he also smelled of alcohol and sweat, and I knew he’d been out fighting or drinking, or both. 

“You’re not hurt?” I asked, softly.

“You’re not my fuckin’ nursemaid,” he returned, which was good as a no. He moved aside and dropped to sprawl on the middle of the couch. I twisted around to face him and tucked my legs up tailor-style. He was scowling, eyes squinted in a way that meant he was just this side of too drunk, mad without an outlet and itching to let it go on the nearest available body. 

“Where on earth did this screen come from?” I asked, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. It was fancy and painted with cranes and snowy mountaintops, in a style that had gone out of fashion when I’d been little. 

“Raphael. Bastard probably stole it from a whorehouse,” Rook answered, shaking his head so the many little braids in his hair rustled like cornsilk.

I blinked, mouth open for a moment. What? How? Why? 

“He gets itchy palms when he’s drunk.” Rook took pity on my stupefaction. “Don’t lift anything important, just useless shit.” He gestured to the screen and then ran his broad calloused hand back through his hair.

“Good to know.” I shook my head as well. “Well. Here I am. The lamb among the wolves.”

“The cat among the pigeons,” Rook returned, with a little smirk. “They pranked you yet?”

“Oh, not yet. I imagine they’re awaiting your excellent guidance. I’m sure my morning will be filled with unease if not outright terror.” I shrugged, and couldn’t help but smile back at him. Sitting here in the near-dark, with only the red glow of the emergency lights highlighting the sketch of his face, it was comfortable. For the moment we were safe in our secret, just us. 

“Sleep well. Might be the last damn night of good fucking sleep you get for a while,” Rook advised, and now his grin bared his teeth, like a dog hunting. 

“I treasure your kind advice,” I told him, cheerfully, and he rolled his eyes.

“Ass.” He was pulling at one earring now: he wore heavy gold hoops in his ears, after the Ke-Han style. They looked exotic but I knew there was a simpler reason behind them, and one not many people would even realize. 

Jewelry could easily be pawned or melted and traded out. Pensioned he might be now, but Rook wore a small fortune everywhere he went. 

Poverty marked us all in different ways. 

I myself carried silver pins hidden in the collars of my shirts. A fortune they might not be, but two or three could get me a meal and a place by any tavern’s fire for the night, and that was valuable enough. 

The motion was a thinking one, and I sat quietly, letting him think. Rook was clever as any ‘Versity student: but all his mind had been bent on learning in an entirely different manner. He could scarcely read and could only write out his own name, but he was a keen study of his fellow man and could guess their motives and their reasons with uncanny accuracy in a very small amount of time. I knew he was considering the puzzle of me, my presence in the Airman and th’Esar’s motives behind it. 

“I can’t see it yet,” he told me at length, face sour. “But you ain’t here just to fuckin’ insult us by fuckin’ trying to reform us.”

“No,” I agreed, “I’d have better luck walking across the harbor in lead shoes. But I think the insult is part of it, to appease the diplomat.”

“It is, but it’s a bigger damned mistake than he oughtta make, with us,” Rook growled, pride stung. “Like that bastard thinks we’ll answer to his beck an’ call.”

“He _is_ the ruler of the city. Most people do answer to his every whim,” I reminded him.

Rook grunted and twisted a tiny braid between his fingers. The front third of his hair was all braided up in braids the width of a pinky finger, a mockery of the Ke-Han war braids. He told me he’d begun to do so because of the rumor that the braids were there to signify how many Volstovic soldier’s they’d killed, and sought to return the favor. I didn’t think that was the case, but he had persisted, and both his hair and his hairstyle was immediately recognizable. It took hours to redo, however.

“Fuck. can’t think ‘bout it anymore, I’m too fuckin’ pissed,” he grumbled at last, and I knew he was frustrated from trying and failing to figure it out. 

“We’ll sort it out,” I answered, and ran a hand through my own hair. “We’ve got time, I think. No-one expects me to work miracles within the day.” He snorted. “You’ll have to help me sort out what to put in my reports. I know there’s a good deal that goes on in here that is not entirely sanctioned.”

That made him chuckle at least. “Damned straight it ain’t. Alright, we’ll figure out how to meet to do that.”

“A pity your room isn’t closer. It’d be easier for me to sneak in.”

“No, that won’t do. Then the boys’d think I was sneakin’ you in to fuck,” Rook declared with ugly disgust.

“Ah. I hadn’t considered that,” I offered, meekly, to soothe his temper.

“You wouldn’t,” he returned, sharply, but he looked away from me and made a careless gesture with one hand. He was upset, but not at me, and I was forgiven for not seeing that possibility of scandal. I knew what went on in Molly, living in a whorehouse, but Rook had done his best to shelter me and in the process had often sacrificed himself. There were topics better left undiscussed, even between us as brothers. 

“Perhaps we can just meet in taverns, as he have been doing,” I offered, and Rook nodded his head side to side, considering it. At last he agreed it would do, for now. 

He yawned enormously. “Fuck. Been awake too long.” I stood, and gestured him to the door, polite and quick as any footman. Rook snorted and rose, pausing as his back popped. He looked at me, then leaned over and gathered me up in one arm. 

I reached up and wrapped my arms around his broad, muscular shoulders for a moment, savoring the reassuring hug. Rook was steady as a rock beneath my touch, and he pressed his face into my hair and took a deep breath. I wondered what I smelled like to him: I had never asked. Most likely ink and paper and dusty library spaces, as that was what I spent most of my time doing. Underneath the overlay of perfume and alcohol, he smelled of metal and ash and engine grease and gasoline and harsh lye soap. But though his scent had changed and the breadth of his shoulders as well, he was still my big brother and still the only constant in my life. He could be such a bastard and unkind and abrupt and selfish, but he was my brother and I still admired and loved him more than I could admit. 

He leaned back and lightly tapped the arm of my glasses, knocking the frames crooked in a habitual teasing gesture. “Sleep tight, professor.”

“And you, Airman,” I returned, grinning despite myself. He nodded, and catfooted off down the hall, silent as a specter but twice as dangerous.

I dug the blanket out of my suitcase and settled down to follow his excellent advice. A good night’s sleep could only improve my clarity of thought and would fortify me for the trials and tribulations I was about to undergo: the gauntlet of the Airmen’s regard and their trickery.


	6. Rook: The Prank War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's _on_ now, man. Plenty of insults and boys being boys. Also a sex scene.

Well, now the cat was out of the bag and, as I had told my brother, in among the pigeons. Now to see if my brother could keep his head above water when it was harmless tricks to survive an’ nothing worth getting a knife out for. Well. I’d brought knives into it aplenty, back when they’d hazed me, but that was on account of making sure they took me damn seriously, an’ remembered the fight an’ never tried it again. Noblemen and their assumptions and airs don’t fly with me and never fuckin’ have. They assume they got the right to do whatever damn thing they want with somebody who ain’t a noble, because they ain’t even a person to them, and I was here to be a fuckin’ Airman, better than some damn nobody. 

And I’d fuckin’ proved to every last man jack of ‘em. 

Thom, though. That was gonna be a trick.

Little shit could lay back an’ take a damn lot right until he got mad an’ then he got damn crafty an’ mean.

He liked to pretend he weren’t, but oh, he could be, my little brother. 

The first morning, though, didn’t nobody bother him. I slept off the head from my drinking an’ everything was good an’ quiet for a while. Thing were, in the mornings, what with most of us too used to being awake at night to get up early. Some did, fuckin’ daft bastards who preferred gettin’ up before the sun did. Like Niall. And Ivory, the fucktwit.

I had a warm soft bed where nobody was gonna bother me, I was gonna sleep as long as I pleased, thank you very fuckin’ much. 

What did get me out of bed at last was Ace shouting at...Ghislain maybe? Somebody who’d gone an’ eaten his sandwich, which was probably Ghislain, who’d walk off with anybody’s food if you left it long enough alone. Him and me both, really. 

I got up and got dressed in cleaner clothes and headed down the hall to the kitchens. But afore I got there, I caught sight of Balfour sliding into the alcove they’d stuck Thom in.

Well. Time to see what the Cindy shit wanted with my brother. 

I ghosted up good and quiet to the corner, an’ leaned against the wall to listen in. Evariste and Compagnon saw me as they went by, but they didn’t say a word when I looked at them all ugly and threatening. 

“This is often what it’s like during the off-seasons,” Balfour was saying. “May I?”

“By all means,” Thom answered, graciously, like the fuckin' Esar himself receiving a guest in the palace. “Though I don’t wish to get you in trouble with the other men.”

“In trouble?” Balfour sounded puzzled.

“For fraternizing with the enemy,” Thom confided, in a low tone. I almost snorted at that: damn straight he was. 

“Oh, no,” Balfour said, a little too quickly. “Well, actually, yes. But it’s not really important. Have you eaten? What are you writing down?”

“Nothing much,” Thom admitted. “On both counts. Only I thought that I might first - observe you in your...natural habitat. Undisturbed by my presence.”

“As if we’re zoo animals?” Balfour asked, but there was the faint thickening of his stupid country accent that meant he was amused. “We are zoo animals, some of us,” Balfour added, and I knew me probably meant me. Or Merritt, the little freckled bastard.

“Well,” Thom replied noncommittally, “it’s not entirely for me to say.”

“Ah,” said Balfour. “Yes, I see. What have you found out thus far about our...natural habitat?”

“You never really talk to one another,” Thom pointed out. “I mean, I’ve seen you. You all know one another very well, but during the morning like this, there aren’t” - he hesitated - “aren’t any lines of communication open among you. Does that make sense?”

“Some of us aren’t the sort who feel friendly in the morning,” Balfour tried to explain. “At night, it’s very different.”

“Yes,” said Thom, and then: “If you don’t mind my asking, what was the outcome with Merritt’s boots?”

“Oh, no one was hurt too badly,” said Balfour cheerfully. “But I do think Merritt is going to need a new pair.”

“Why’s that?”

“Ghislain dropped them out the window,” Balfour explained. “It was better than if Rook had done it, any case.”

Oh?

“Oh?” Thom echoed my thoughts. 

“Well, because Rook would have thrown them, you see, with Merritt in them,” Balfour finished. Damn straight I would've, and right out the window too. Wouldn't have been the first time, either. Little shit didn't fuckin' learn. “No, all in all, I believe it was good Ghislain was the one who dealt with it first.”

“Ah,” was Thom's answer, and then the sudden scribble of pen against his paper. He'd gone off on one of his fuckin' bizarre note-taking jags. He did that sometimes even when he didn't have paper, sometimes on his sleeve or his own arm. Fuckin' daft, he was. The ‘Versity was full of idiots just the same: too many books. Addled their brains. 

“I’d find a safe place to put those notes,” Balfour said at last. “Not that I think- Not that there’s any reason for you to be paranoid, certainly,” he went on, in a tone that good as fuckin' shouted there was damn fine reason for Thom to be paranoid. “It’s only, if they’re important to you, you should keep them safe.”

I grinned. That so, hmm? Well, I’m sure I could drop a word in the right ears to make a move on that. There’d be trouble for those notes Balfour was so damn concerned about. I pushed off the wall and headed past the screen, tossing a glare in there. Balfour winced, and Thom watched me go by with his green eyes gone sharp. 

I went to see if anybody’d made lunch so’s I could have me some breakfast. 

As it turned out, Luvander had, an’ he was the only fuckin’ one ~~now~~ who’d give me some without knives or ugly words coming into it. Fuckin’ Cindy as shit, Luvander was, but he kept it real quiet. Thought he was bein’ real secret about it, but I always fuckin’ knew a Cindy when I saw one. Where I came from it was real damn hard not to.

So I got me some breakfast, an’ then I went down to the bays to polish Have.

She was sleepy in the late afternoon grey - skies all clouded up and threatening rain - and grumbled faintly at me as I started polishing. I sang her a new tune, picked up in the tavern the night before. It was a pretty little ballad about a country girl lifting her skirts, and after the first time through Have raised her head proper an’ hummed along. I knew she’d fuckin’ like it, she always like the dirty ones. 

She started twitching her tail to the beat, making a low hum of metal and gears that nearly drowned me out….an’ kept any nosy busybody passing by from fuckin’ listening in, like I’d done earlier to Thom and Balfour. I weren’t no idiot. 

“So they moved Thom in last night, “ I told her. 

“Did they? You boys started in on him yet?” She knew all about the hazing: hard not to, when I’d started coming down into her pen to sleep safe at night. 

“Not yet. Tomorrow,” I told her, still thinking of what to do about those notes. Ah, now who’d had the paste last for Niall and Compagnon’s secret project? I grinned in delight. Perfect. 

“I want to meet him,” Have told me startling me out of my thoughts.

“Fuckin’ what?” I asked, crouching down to get at her elbow. “Who?”

“Thom,” she answered, with a huff. “I want to see what he’s like, if he’s got you so pissed.”

I grimaced. Shit.

Did I want my best girl to meet my little brother? Now, on the one hand I did. Havemercy was the best damn thing to ever happen to me since Thom. 

On the other hand, it had the potential to all go to fuckin’ shitting hell if I bit it. I didn’t intend on dyin’ real fuckin’ soon, but neither had any other of the dead pilots on our roster. And Balfour was the best damn example of how shit that went.

Have didn’t know he was my brother, but I didn’t want her taking a shine to him despite that. There was no fuckin’ way he’d last in the war, my brother. Too fuckin’ tenderhearted and too fuckin’ _brainless_ where it counted in a fight.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the hell out of the little shit, but he started out eating goddamn bugs and he ain’t improved much from then what with a ‘Versity education muddling up his head.

“And what, get him thinkin’ he’s good enough to see the likes of you, baby girl?” I sneeered. “No fuckin’ way.”

Have creaked a laugh, and flicked her tail at me, narrowly missing my shins: it would have turned my legs solid blue for a few days if it had landed. She didn’t hold back much, but neither did I, and that was how we fuckin’ were. Made for eachother, all perfect-like.

“You aren’t good enough for me, brat,” she retorted, and chuckled in a low wheeze. “I don’t see how he could be _worse._ ”

“He’s a fuckin’ stuck-up Cindy ass from ‘Versity, Have.” 

“So’s Balfour, or so you say.”

She had me there. I knew when to fuckin’ give in, much as people didn’t think I did. “Ain’t nobody worse’n me, that’s true.” I stood on tiptoe to rub an oiled rag over her jaw. She curled her head ‘round so I could reach easier and sighed a hot breath over me. 

“Of course it is. Bring him down here one night. He’ll take one look and run off, like those silly bints you men bring down here sometimes.”

Not too fuckin’ likely. Thom had more balls than the ladies who occasionally thought they was brave enough to take a peek at the dragons. Weren’t many of ‘em an’ it weren’t encouraged, but there was protocol for takin’ civilians up on flights. The thought made my gut clench, a spike of excitement - fuckin’ _hells_ but Thom would love flying. Scared fuckin’ shitless, but he’d always loved stunts like that when he were little. Me throwing him in the air when he were tiny or us jumping off roofs or diving in the harbor for floaters. Crazy shit like that. 

I blinked and found myself face-to-eye with Have, and clockwork gears whirred as she lifted her head slowly. If a damn machine could smirk, she was. “I see I gave you something to think about.”

So she had, but not what she’d been fuckin’ intending. “Yeah. I’ll fuckin’ think it over, baby girl. Happy, sweetheart?”

“I’m made of metal, so I wouldn’t know,” she answered back, but she were. I knew it. 

I rubbed at her shoulder, though it was already so damn shiny I could almost see myself in it.

“Hey, Rook!” The voice echoed loudly. Magoughin.

“Fuck you want, cross-eyed bastard?” I bellowed back.

“Niall brought back some pretty tarts from the Palace. Tits like melons. And Jeannot says you can’t beat him at darts.”

I snorted, and wiped the rag down Havemercy’s shoulder one last time. “Jeannot’s already fuckin’ drunk if he says that.” I patted Have on the shoulder and headed back upstairs. I was pretty much always in the mood to tickle a pretty girl, fuckin’ especially if she had good tits on her. 

Turned out there were a lot of eligible ladies, young noblesse with money enough they could sweep a wrecked reputation under the rug. Girls didn’t come to the Airman for fuckin’ tea, after all.

They came for wine and raunchy flirting and some came for a tumble or two with the goddamn heroes of the war. And the redhead that was all but falling out of her dress, corset laced tighter’n a fuckin’ military boot? She was here for the fuckin’, and I knew it when she looked at me and grinned and leaned over in a fuckin’ curtsey that let me see fuckin’ straight down her bodice. I liked a girl who knew what she damn wanted, an’ this one sure as fire did.

There was already a game of darts going on, Jeannot and Raphael and Merritt, and it weren’t no trouble to fit myself in. Somebody had opened a decanter of Kiril rum and the smell mixed with perfume and clove cigarettes and the bite of ash and sweat. I kicked Merritt in the ankle so he missed his shot and went to get me a drink. Niall was pouring out generous glasses and Magoughin had just brought in a bottle of red wine.

Ghislain and Ace were playing chess, but Ghislain had a girl on his knee and seemed much more interested in how she was giggling breathlessly in his ear. One of the blondes sat down at the piano, urged on by her friends, and started playing a merry tune. Ivory looked annoyed as Evariste left off whatever fuckin’ card game they were playing and went to pay court to a girl. Compagnon and Evariste and two brunettes started dancing, a lively country jig that flashed a lot of stockinged ankle on the woman’s part. 

Merritt was out and Raphael was shit at darts and Jeannot was drunk enough to be almost a challenge. Tight-laced fuck got bold in his cups, talked more shit but packed the punch to back it up when he weren’t too busy pretending he was too damn good for the rest of us. 

Luvander kicked the door in and announced he was going the fuck to bed, keep it down, you animals. Jeannot missed his shot on account of that and went stalking towards the door. Luvander went scooting down the hall in a hurry with Jeannot close after him, and I laughed.

“Winner takes the readhead!” I whooped, and she tilted her head and hid behind her fan, acting all shy and proper while her friends giggled like marketplace geese and the rest of the boys cheered my win. But her brown eyes were bold as brass and when I came over and put her arm around her waist she leaned all up against me like melting butter. So fuckin’ easy when you pick the one that wants it, an’ I sat her down with me for a good long drink of wine and a little bit of figuring out how serious of a tumble I was in for. 

Turned out she and I had the private common room for a little while. She started getting loud when I got my mouth between her legs, and by the time I got to fuckin’ her proper she was screamin’ like an alley-cat in heat and didn’t quit ‘till I was done. Makes for a damn good showing but after a bit gets a little grating on the fuckin’ ears. She let me fuck her tits though. 

And her fuckin’ tits gave me a damn good idea, too, one I mentioned all aside-like to Compagnon in the wee hours of the morning as the girls straggled out to their waiting carriages. He grinned with a look that said he was going to enjoy it, too.

Next morning I met Thom in the hall: stripped of the top half of his nightshirt thanks to my knives (along the seams, he’d be able to sew it back, fuckin’ Nellie) and sporting a pair of enormous paper-mache breasts on his chest made from his very precious notes. He gave me a bleary-eyed blank stare that said he knew I was the one responsible for the fuckin’ indignity and shuffled for the showers.

I damn near broke a rib I laughed so hard. That had been fucking _perfect._

I was still chuckling when I passed by the showers and heard him and Ghislain talking. 

“You’ve got to sign up in advance for a shower.”

“Oh,” said Thom, in the mild tone that mean he was about to bullshit you. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to remember in the future.”

Try, not would, the little shit.

Ghislain chuckled. Smarter than he looked, that one, he probably knew Thom wasn’t being sincere. “Too bad. I thought they looked rather nice on you.”

That set me off again, and I staggered off to the kitchens. Oh, this was gonna be _good._

Ace had the next idea, and the very next morning we carried it out. A bowl of warm water, a sleeping fool, and within minutes there was piss everywhere. Thom woke up and said, very softly and distinctly in a way that made him sound just like me: “Bastion fuck.”

I laughed. “Pissing yourself? You’re just a baby. Go home and suck your mother’s tit.”

Thom sat up and answered grumpily, “Can’t, you’re too busy fucking her tits.”

Magoughin started giggling and Jeannot said “Oh!” and Raphael snorted like a stepped-on-sow.

That little fuckin’ _ass,_ he couldn’t give me lip like that in front of the other boys. Not and get away with it like he usually did. Half mad, half laughing (‘cause that was a damn good comeback) I pounced and took a swing, the rest of the men laughing and howling. I got Thom in a headlock and then the bitch _bit_ me.

“Fuck!”

I dropped him and he took off lickety-split. Good fighting tactics for little skinny dipshits, bad fuckin’ idea when I knew the lay of the land and was pissed. I was up and after him in a heartbeat, and I’m faster’n I fuckin’ look. The boys followed along, cheering the fight on. 

Thom ducked into the showers. Bad move. I cornered him in the last stall, and right as I went to grab him and twist off his fuckin’ _ears_ , he turned the water on. “ _Shit_ you cross-fucked _bitch!_ ” I howled, and caught him on the second lunge. He struggled like a greased cat in a sack, but I was stronger and in a minute had him right out the damn window.

Right into the rubbish heap outside he went, with a shout that sounded suspiciously like a Molly insult about my parentage.

“Serves you right you syphilitic cocksucker!” I called out the window, and turned to see the rest of the boys watching with various grins and raised eyebrows. “What is this, market-day an’ they’re selling tits? Fuck off you cunts.”


	7. Thom: Role Playing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein playing a role is harder than it seems, and Thom proves he is in fact insane.

The fifth day, all my clothes were stolen and left in the showers in wet heaps. 

The sixth day, there were beetles. 

Clearly, the Dragon Corps could work together in seamless unison to achieve such bewildering effects of chaos and disorder. Granted, beetles in my hair and in my suitcases was not as noble a goal as decimating the Ke-Han forces, but sometimes the abstracts of a notion were just as important as the specifics. 

I shook out all my clothes and both my trunks, dumping the beetles out in a shiny black rain. It must have taken them hours to collect such a quantity of insects from the rubbish-heaps outside. Perhaps they had paid the dragon boys to do it. 

It was an uncomfortable living situation, to be sure, but I had grown up in worse and was completely convinced no-one was going maim, kill, or dismember me, and that was nice. I had decided I was going to add an entire new section to my commentary on a society raised wholly on war, dedicated to the Dragon Corps and the peculiarities developed in a unit of men dedicated to one purpose and allowed free reign to pursue it. Given the mystery surrounding the pilots and the fact the entire public was in love with them and their glory, it would no doubt be a brilliantly successful dissertation. 

Also, leaving was not an option, as the esteemed Esar would probably execute me for disobeying orders. 

On the eighth day, I made the mistake Balfour had warned me about, bringing my wet hand to my face and thus giving myself a brilliantly blue handprint across my left cheek and nose. 

“I am sorry,” Balfour told me privately as I passed him in the hall. “I thought I warned you-”

“I think it’s dashing,” said Luvander, as he strode by, with a bright grin tossed over his shoulder.

“I am sorry,” Balfour repeated.

I believed him. He was a gentle soul, trapped in here with less kind personalities and men hardened by combat or ill-use at the hands of their fellow men. Even in the few days I had been here, I had begun to recognize some characteristics, and more than just my brother had certain quirks that spoke of a distrust of others that went beyond mere aloofness. 

“I know. Though the rest of the men might do well to consider the emotional well-being of others,” I declared, as Rook strode by, sniggering.

And well he might laugh: when he had worn a blue handprint, half of it had been in his hair, and apparently he’d stabbed Jeannot. I was not half so dangerous as my brother.

“Yes. Well. I’m afraid...most of them don’t,” Balfour confessed, and slumped a little, disheartened.

“According to th’Esar, that’s what I’m here to change,” I sighed, equally as dismayed at such a task. “But I think I have an idea. I need to talk with Adamo.”

“I’ll fetch him for you,” Balfour declared, with a little grin, and trotted off up the hall. 

The ninth morning, my boots were wet. I was greatly dismayed, but a quick olfactory examination proved it to be water, not piss, and I was intensely grateful. (Perhaps Rook had remembered that he was the one who would pay for new boots if mine were ruined, as my student stipend was paltry, and new leather boots were stupidly expensive these days.) The dead fish was of no consequence whatsoever to someone who’d grown up by the docks, and I resigned myself to going about in my socks today . The flagstone floors of the Airman were chilly, but not intolerable. 

Breakfast was an eccentric affair, as Ghislain was making something with eggs and Raphael promptly appropriated my fish and Balfour was trying meekly to insert himself into the bustle in order to make his tea. Adamo was staring at the coffee-pot with the thundercloud intensity that was his usual morning visage before coffee, and Luvander was doing something with bread, butter, marmalade and gin that looked like an insult to all breakfast dishes out there.

I made off with a slice of buttered bread, a soft-cooked egg, and a cup of water. I settled on the relative privacy of my couch and set to eating.

I hadn’t gotten far before a broad hand snaked over my shoulder, stole my bread, and then returned it with an enormous bite taken out of it. 

“Go threaten Luvander for a piece, before he ruins the loaf,” I suggested, working on my latest set of notes. I had three sets, currently, two hidden and this set I was working on today. 

“Fuck if I know why that shit loves marmalade so,” Rook rumbled, voice sleep-rough and low so as not to be overheard.

“He likes sweets. Also, Ghislain makes him nervous.” Which explained the bread ruination this morning.

Rook grunted. “Wonder…” he muttered, but for once kept his speculation to himself.

I glanced over my shoulder at him, a dim figure backlit by the morning’s sunshine streaming down the hall. His hair was haloed in gold, his shoulders broad and firm, his face in shadow. He shook his head, patted me on the shoulder, and left as silently as he’d come.

It was the first stolen moment together we’d had since I’d first arrived here, and I was surprised by how much it buoyed my spirits. I finished my breakfast and gathered my notes. I had devised an exercise that would attempt to re-introduce the concept of empathy to the Airmen, and though I doubted it would be successful, it would most certainly prove entertaining.

I was not (as most are not) above deriving my amusement from my fellow man.

I made my way to the common room an hour later. I laid out my notes, shuffled the battered furniture into a semi-circle, and listened to the distant shouts and curses that was the melody of Adamo rounding up the pilots for me. He had great doubts as to me actually accomplishing anything, let alone my purpose, but he was at least willing to help and put forth an effort that might be reported as compliance to our ruler. 

At last every man was chivvied in and had selected a seat. I stood at the front of the circle, before the fireplace, and tried not to feel like an inadequate child in my socked feet. 

“Today, we are going to try something different,” I declared, and watched their expressions change. Some immediately became suspicious, others bored, and one or two curious. Rook grinned in a predatory manner, but that was Rook and I ignored him. “We are going to play roles, in order to understand those different from us.”

Luvander got a very peculiar look on his face. “You mean like...role-playing?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” I said cautiously, uncertain as to where he was going with this. 

“But isn’t that like when the redhead’s been a very naughty schoolgirl and the brunette’s also been very naughty and they’re spending all this time being punished by the blonde, who does it all with spanking-” Luvander began, but Adamo cleared his throat all of a sudden, mercifully cutting him off.

I found I was bright pink, and several of the men looked very interested in what Luvander had been trying to explain. I cleared my throat. “Ahem. No, no, that’s _not_ the sort of role-playing we will be doing.”

“What other kind is there?” Compagnon asked, puzzled. Not a fan of the arts, that one. 

“You’ll soon see.” I shuffled the strips of parchment in my hands, and started around the circle, giving each man a strip of paper. It was good heavy parchment, thick and cream-coloured, and though I hated to waste it for such an inane purpose, I needed to make sure the name on each piece of paper was clear and unmarred by handling. Returning to the head of the circle, I clasped my hands behind my back. “Now, you’ll see that on each of these cards is a name.”

“It’s not my name,” said Compagnon, immediately.

“Indeed, none of your names are on these cards,” I answered, cheered by the fact each man was peering at the paper. Various degrees of literacy soon became apparent, with some merely glancing swiftly at the names and others taking more time, one or two with lips moving silently to sound it out. I knew Rook had the barest of educations, but that Merritt, Niall, and Compagnon all had to read very carefully was an interesting insight.

“So they’re our roles,” Raphael surmised, quickly, holding his paper between the first two fingers of one hand. 

“Exactly. Three points for you, Raphael, for that apt assessment,” I told him. The effect was profound. Raphael immediately looked pleased with himself after that, and the rest of the men sour that they were playing a game with points, that none of them had known it before now, and that Raphael was already winning. Competitive natures sharped to the forefront, and I nodded. 

“The rules and information are as follows. One: The names and the cards have been distributed completely at random. Two: If you ask to exchange your card for another, three of your points will be deducted. The purpose of the game is to represent the character, the emotions, the viewpoints, and the sensitivities of the name written on the card currently in your possession. Each time you make an astute and insightful observation as to the nature of your particular role, you will be awarded three points. Whoever first achieves thirty points will win the game.”

I sat down in my chair and pulled out my notebook and a pencil, ready to tally in the points. 

“Excuse me,” said Niall, “but my card says on it ‘That Whore Rook Insulted the Other Day for Having Ugly Breasts.’”

I barely refrained from snickering. “Yes,” I said. “Yes it does.”

“Mine says ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat’s Wife,’” Balfour said, looking at Rook, then at me, then just looking distressed at no one in particular.

“Mine says ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat,’” Adamo said. “So I guess you’d best sit here by me.”

Luvander and Balfour exchanged seats in short order. 

Rook looked at his paper, and his lips tightened. He looked up at me with a spark of fury in his eyes, and I immediately guessed which card he held. I winced. That had not been intentional. He saw my flinch, and the anger eased, but his lip curled and he spat: “I’m not doing it. Fuck you an’ your cards.”

I couldn’t recant, not without exposing the fact that we knew eachother and that I was intimately familiar with the sorts of subjects that made Rook uncomfortable. I made a note to secure some licorice within the near future as a suitable apology, and looked down at my notebook, giving ground in the only way I could at the moment. 

“Ah. That...puts you at negative three points, then with everyone else at zero and Raphael in the lead with three points.” He could exchange the card, but that wouldn’t occur to him (my brother never admitted defeat if he could help it) and I couldn’t suggest it. Stuck at cross-purposes, I could only move forward. He would forgive me, it was a mistake, but it didn’t mean I didn’t feel terrible about it. 

“I feel,” Ace said, sudden and sly, bright blue eyes glittering beneath heavy lids, “that as the ‘Prince of Arlemagne,’ I’m kind of in a tight spot right about now, don’t you think? What with everyone gossiping about me, even though I managed so cleverly to place all the blame on that ever-so-foolish Margrave of mine.”

He was not as half-asleep as he looked, that one, and I made a brief note in the margin of my paper. I knew by now he was a country noble, like Balfour, but I wasn’t sure how much of his disinterest in the world at large was affected and how much genuine. It seemed he wasn’t blind to politics...but then that had been an incident hard to miss, and only overshadowed by Rook’s blunder in its wake.

“Indeed,” I agreed. “Very astute. Three points for you as well, Ace.”

“And I,” Balfour piped up, “I definitely didn’t enjoy being called a whore in front of so many of my peers, or...or treated so abominably by that heartless airman of the Dragon Corps!” 

He cut a brief look at Rook as he said it, and there was an underlying bitterness in his tone that made the last statement ring more true than he probably realized. I stifled a grimace. Rook had not been kind to him, I was coming to understand, struggling with grieving over Amery’s sudden death and Balfour’s striking similarity to his older brother. Rook was rarely kind in general, our early life having not been the sort that nurtured a forgiving and gentle spirit. But he also expressed affection in a certain hard-handed way that was easily misinterpreted, and between that and how close of friends he and Amery had been, and how badly he’d taken the older Airman’s death, I had the feeling Balfour was completely unaware of the mixed nature of Rook’s feelings about him. 

“Two astute observations,” I told Balfour, calling my mind back to the task at hand and tallying in the points. “Six points. 

“Maybe as ‘The Arlemagne Diplomat’s Wife’,” Rook declared, with a curled sneer, tone cutting in his displeasure, “You shouldn’t’ve acted like a whore and avoided being called one.”

Balfour ducked his head and said nothing, but he was frowning. 

“I don’t know that the Margrave would’ve said that, actually,” Adamo rumbled, and I suspected that the aforementioned ‘acquaintance’ was closer to a friendship, if he knew the man so well to know what he might say. I made a note of that as well.

“I wouldn’t know,” Rook snapped back, coiling in his chair as if for a fight, “Seeing as how I ain’t no Mary Margrave.”

As I scrambled for a way to intervene that was not obvious, Jeannot spoke up.

“Oh, no one said you were,” snapped Jeannot, short and sharp, like a current through the air. He was quiet, Jeannot, but according to my brother's summation, he got serious quickly, and all the more when he thought someone was wasting his time. He was also well aware of the current tension, I could see, and willing to break it up rather than suffer a fight. “I, as ‘Chief Sergeant of the Airmen,’ wish to get through this with as little incident as possible.”

Adamo made a sound in his throat like he was growling, amused and happy as an old dog, and his smile was distinctly flattered.

“Excellent,” I sighed, relieved. “Thank you, Jeannot. Three points.” Jeannot nodded to me slightly, dark eyes speculative. Well, there was one Rook and I might not fool for long, pretending we did not know one another. 

“I guess, as one of the ‘Dragon Boys’ down where the dragons are kept, I’d like it if no one tried to tell me how to do my job,” piped up Merritt, with a pointed look at Ivory, who returned it in a way that made Merritt blanch. Rook had explained to me that Ivory was ‘fuckin’ off in the head’ and very picky about how his girl was prepped, prone to shouting and throwing things when it wasn’t to his liking. 

From the look Merritt was receiving, I had the feeling Ivory was either touched in the head or - like my brother - enjoyed frightening people for his own amusement. 

I nodded to Merritt and marked down his points.

The men were starting to be engaged, thinking, and I was pleased. I hadn’t expected this to work so well: the most participation I had anticipated had been mockery and horsing around. But I had apparently underestimated their competitive natures. These were highly-driven men who did not all get along, and the ability to hold a “win” over the other’s heads was a prize they were not about to let go. 

Whether or not they’d learn anything from it remained to be seen. 

“As ‘Provost,’” Compagnon said eagerly, “I really wish people would stop breaking the rules. It’d make my life a sight easier and I could kick back and enjoy the sweet little paycheck th’Esar tosses me every other week.”

“A little obvious, but I’ll grant it to you,” I decided, graciously. 

Rook suddenly perked up with a wicked grin. “If I were the Margrave Royston, I’d blow up your ‘Versity-stuffed head an’ dance in your brains.”

Ghislain made a disapproving noise. Rook was wearing the intolerably smug expression he always got when he thought he was being exceptionally clever. 

I blinked slowly at that mental image, then told him dryly, “I suppose I _should_ give you points for being correct on his Talent.”

“Suppose you _should,_ ” Rook returned, grin sharpening and returning the emphasis. 

“But as that’s not an accurate statement of his actions _nor_ an insight into his emotions, then perhaps I might not,” I told him, going for the kill effortlessly. He’d set himself right up for me, and I had to pinch my lips tight together to keep from grinning. His expression went from fighting sharp to bewildered to sour all within a heartbeat, and then he cocked his head and shifted his weight abruptly.

I dropped my notebook and dove out of my chair to the floor in the instant before he lunged. I _knew_ that headtilt to my core and exactly what it foreboded. 

I never had been able to keep my mouth shut, though.

He missed by a hair: I felt the tug on my sleeve. I was up and between the gap of Ivory and Ghislain’s chairs in an instant, and heard Rook’s frustrated snarl as he saw I’d made for a place too narrow for him to get by. The door or under the couch? The question of exactly _where_ to flee checked me up for an instant too long.

I heard the whistle of a thrown knife and went low, knowing Rook would go high and to the left to miss me anyway. I bolted for the door again, cut a quick zag around a chair to trip him up (I heard him curse as he scrambled), and hit the hallway at a dead run. Suddenly realized I was still in my socks, and without boots I was at a damn disadvantage for options as to where I could go for escape. 

Rook had never landed a blow on me but in play or by accident, and I had no fear he was going to start now. It was imperative I take the “fight” where none of the other men could see the conclusion. I skidded around the corner, dove into the kitchen, and fell headlong over Merritt’s _fucking_ boots.

Rook, half a step behind me at this juncture, swore in a violent bitten-off lash and just managed to avoid the same fate, jumping over me neat-footed as a cat and landing within an inch of my fingers: I felt the reverberations through the flagstones. From the thunder of feet, the rest of the men weren’t far behind, and I scrambled up, shot underneath Rook’s reaching arm, and hit the window just as everyone else rounded the corner. 

“Scab-faced rake!” I howled as I tipped myself out the window. 

“Crazy fucking bastard!” Rook shouted after me.

I landed on my shoulder in the ash-heap and rolled right into the street, splattering myself with mud and manure. Rook poked his head out the window, and I saluted him with both middle fingers. 

He swore virulently but he was too large to get out this particular window, and had to settle for going ‘round the long way. While he did so, I gathered myself up and made tracks around the corner, trying to avoid most of the puddles. Seating myself on a coal-scuttle by the back doors that led into the dragon bays, I waited. 

I didn’t hear Rook, and I was watching in the wrong direction, and startled badly when he caught me by one arm, pulled me up by main force, and shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth in my head. Times like this reminded me exactly how strong he’d become in piloting: I felt like a rat caught by a terrier.

“You little _fuckin’_ shit-brained fisherman’s bastard! Are you fuckin’ hurt?” 

“No, not that you shaking me like a rat would’ve helped that,” I answered, stung into waspishness.

He snorted and let me go, reaching up to dust bastion-knew-what out of my hair. “Fuckin’ hell, I forgot the ash-heap was under that window.” 

Which explained the shaking, then, if I’d given him a fright. “Did you think I’d jump onto the street?” And risk breaking a bone or my head? The look he gave me said yes, he fully believed me capable of such stupidity. I reached up to rub my face, then stopped and instead dusted horse manure off my hand. “Give me _some_ credit, John.”

“Says the brat who gullible ‘nough to believe in nixies ‘till he was fuckin’ ten,” Rook retorted, and put a rough hand on my shoulder to hold me still so he could dust off my back. Believing in water nymphs was entirely different from injuring myself, but he didn’t give me a chance to protest. “Fuckin’ hell Hilary, but you look like you’ve been on a raid.”

“I wasn’t aware they involved so much horse-shit,” I informed him, leaning down to brush off my knees, and he barked a laugh, finally coaxed back into good humor. 

“Sometimes.” He looked at me, then frowned and caught my chin with one hand. “That ash or you hit your face?”

Puzzled, I reached up and rubbed at my face, then winced as I found a sore spot just below my right eye. “Ow.” I patted at it with exploring fingers. “Probably hit my face when I tripped over Merritt’s fuckin’ boots.”

He chuckled, let go of my chin, and brushed his thumb gently over the spot in question. It didn’t even hurt. “Looks like to bruise,” he announced. “Tell ‘em I hit you.”

“I will.” I wondered if I’d done it on my own knee in the fall. 

Rook shook his head, braids rustling like cornsilk. 

“So, did you catch me and hit me, or hit me before I jumped out the window?” I queried.

“Before,” Rook answered, after a moment’s thought. “And I went to find you, but you hid, and now I’ve gone off to Jove’s to have a drink to improve my temper.”

I grinned. “And I’ll get clean clothes and go look to buy new boots, as mine are soaked.”

“An’ be glad it ain’t piss,” Rook retorted.

“Oh, I am, thank you.” I grinned at him. “Meet you at Jove’s in an hour. Try not to get too drunk without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize the bars and whorehouses in Havemercy are all named religiously, but I blanked on anything clever. Jove is a minced oath ("by Jove!") for the Lord's name, derived from "Jehovah."


End file.
